Sisi grants privileges, immunity to Egypt's military brass
Egypt’s parliament recently approved a draft law granting senior commanders of the armed forces ministerial and presidential privileges while allowing them to enjoy special immunity both in Egypt and abroad.
CAIRO — The Egyptian parliament approved July 3 a draft law offering special treatment to senior commanders of the armed forces.
The draft law grants many unprecedented privileges to these commanders and gives the president of the republic the power to summon these commanders to serve the armed forces for life. It also grants those appointed by the president privileges and rights that are usually prescribed for ministers, and it allows them to enjoy diplomatic immunity when traveling abroad similarly to heads and members of diplomatic missions.
The draft law sparked controversy, as it failed to set a criterion for the selection of those senior commanders and gave President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi alone the power to select them.
The draft law says that except with the permission of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, no judicial action shall be taken against any of the subjects of the draft law for any acts they committed while the constitution was disrupted, from July 3, 2013, until the parliament started exercising its duties on Jan. 10, 2016.
