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VI. THE CHILD LAW: ARBITRARY ENFORCEMENT AND VAGUE LAWS
According to Ministry of Interior statistics, more than 25 percent of all children arrested in Egypt in 2001 were arrested on charges of being "vulnerable to delinquency."204 The Egyptian government argues that the provision is intended "to protect children exposed to delinquency before they ever commit an offence."205 In reality, police effectively treat these children as criminal suspects, detaining them in police lockups until it is determined that they have no warrants for their arrest, or until the Public Prosecution Office or the juvenile courts order them released, remanded to a social welfare institution, or placed under judicial probation. While not criminal sentences, these orders can result in children being placed in institutions or monitored weekly by armed social welfare experts for up to three years with little or no judicial review of the prosecution order or the placement.206 In most if not all cases Human Rights Watch investigated, these arrests were based on the police's arbitrary application of overly broad and vaguely worded provisions that penalize conduct that would not be grounds for arrest if the victim were an adult or if existing laws exempting children from prosecution for begging were implemented. In many cases the arrests also result in numerous violations of children's procedural rights, without providing children any of the Child Law's protective or rehabilitative measures. The number of arrests of Egyptian children on charges of being "vulnerable to delinquency" has more than doubled since 2000, rising from 4,197 arrests to 10,958 in 2001.207 Arrests of children "vulnerable to danger" went from zero cases in 2000 to 185 cases in 2001.208 Three thousand three hundred sixty of the 2001 arrests took place in the Cairo governorate, in comparison to four cases listed in 2000.209 Ministry of Interior officials credit the rise in arrests to the October 2000 decision to increase the status and resources allocated to the General Administration for Juvenile Welfare Investigations, and told us they wanted additional resources to allow them to increase the number of arrests and expand arrests of children who are truants from school.210 Defining Children "Vulnerable to Delinquency" and "Vulnerable to Danger"
Following the passage of the Child Law, and in partial recognition of the failure of the law's provisions to address Egypt's international legal obligations toward children in need of protection, the government added a category of children "vulnerable to danger" when it issued the Child Law's implementing regulation in 1997.216 However, police, prosecutors, and judges rarely invoke the provisions on children "vulnerable to danger," and both legal concepts encompass extremely broad categories of ill-defined conduct and status that, while not crimes, nevertheless subject children to arrest and in practice rarely result in genuine rehabilitative measures. The Child Law defines as "vulnerable to delinquency" any person under eighteen who begs, including selling or performing for small amounts of money; collects cigarette butts or rubbish; engages in immoral conduct or works for those who do; lacks a stable place of residence; associates with suspect persons or others vulnerable to delinquency; is a habitual truant; is incorrigible; lacks a legal source of income or support; suffers from a mental defect or illness; or, in the case of children under seven, commits any felony or misdemeanor.217 The law provides virtually no information on when authorities should take such a child into custody or how the various elements of the definition relate to each other.218 The vague language of this definition invites selective enforcement and stigmatizes children by making them subject to arrest for conduct that in many cases would not be a criminal offense if committed by an adult and is often direct evidence of the child's need for protection. This is particularly apparent when considering the provisions on begging, mixing with suspect persons, sleeping in the streets, and truancy, which together account for more than 98 percent of all arrests of children "vulnerable to delinquency" in 2001.219 Truancy, like incorrigibility, is a status offense-an act that would not be criminal if committed by an adult. Begging is a criminal offense in Egypt, but the Begging Law only applies to persons at least eighteen years old. 220 Egypt's Vagrants and Suspect Persons Law criminalizes persons who lack a legal means to support themselves, but excludes from this category women and children under fifteen who do not actively pursue an illegal means of living.221 It also specifies that a person must be over eighteen years old to be considered a suspect person, and does not criminalize association with suspect persons.222 The Child Law's implementing regulations state that a child is "vulnerable to danger" if "found in a state that threatens the sound rearing he requires, and especially" in situations where the child's security, morals, health or life are in danger, where his environment exposes him to danger, where the person responsible for his support abandons him, where the child is in danger of not completing his education, or where the child is exposed to incitement to illicit use of drugs, alcohol, violence or immoral acts.223 These categories are essentially status offenses and subject children to arrest not for criminal acts they have committed but for others' failure to provide them with the care and protection they require. Like the provision on children "vulnerable to delinquency," these categories are so ill-defined as to encourage selective enforcement, and indeed enforcement jumped suddenly from no cases in 2000 to 185 in 2001. 224 Arrest Campaigns
- `Azzat A., fourteen, Cairo, Egypt, July 10, 2002 In al Manial neighborhood and in Ramsis Square, the police catch you a lot. We run, but sometimes they catch us. Almost every other day there is a problem with the police. -Khaled M., eleven, Cairo, Egypt, July 9, 2002 Egyptian law requires that police making arrests have a warrant from the Public Prosecution Office or, in cases of suspects apprehended while committing a serious crime, "sufficient evidence" to charge.225 Both requirements are frequently violated in practice.226 The Child Law lowers this standard by allowing police and officials appointed by the Ministry of Justice in cooperation with the Ministry of Insurance and Social Affairs to arrest children who are not suspected of crimes but who are considered "vulnerable to delinquency."227 The director of Cairo Governorate Police Directorate's al Azbekiya juvenile lockup, Brigadier Yasir Abu Shahdi, described his interpretation of these arrest powers: "We arrest kids in parks who look like they are homeless. We arrest kids selling tissues in the street. These kids become known to us, so it isn't hard. [Sometimes] we arrest kids walking down the street during school hours with their school books, but I don't have enough officers to make as many of these arrests as I would like. I am asking for more officers, because in the future we want to conduct campaigns to search for and arrest truants." 228 While some of these arrests involve small numbers of children, more often they take the form of arrest campaigns involving tens of children in a targeted neighborhood.229 "Our daily work is to gather up children from the streets and arrest any who are in violation of the law." Abu Shahdi said. "[In contrast,] the arrest campaigns last three or four days and are more specialized. For example, if we learn that the number of children who sell tissues in a particular neighborhood has increased, I conduct a campaign in that neighborhood."230 Other Ministry of Interior officials told us that they believed arrest campaigns were necessary to discourage children "vulnerable to delinquency" from congregating in middle class and tourist sections of Cairo. A mid-level police officer who had participated in arrest campaigns told us that the police conduct arrest campaigns "to demonstrate the government's presence. Because if we didn't have arrest campaigns then quickly the streets would fill up with kids selling tissues and wiping cars and begging."231 In reality the arrest campaigns are even broader in their scope that this description suggests. Juvenile justice experts, social workers, and activists at nongovernmental organizations providing services to street children and working children consistently said that during the campaigns police simply grab any child they find on the street. "[T]he campaigns to gather children can happen as a result of an important conference," said Dr. `Azza Kuraym, the leading expert on juvenile justice and street children at the government-funded National Center for Social and Criminal Research. "They send police vehicles to gather children the way they send vehicles to collect dogs from the street. . . . There is no consideration for which children [they arrest,] street children, those in school or not, those begging or not; all that is important is that they collect the children on the street."232 Another expert told us, "The police don't distinguish between the child who works as a mechanic's assistant and is coming back from work in dirty clothes and the child who is actually begging. They arrest first and then they wait for the social worker to find the family so that the family can come to the station to get the child."233 Nongovernmental organizations providing services to street children told us that these campaigns seriously impair their work by preventing children from reaching their centers, and some children complained that they had been arrested while on their way to nongovernmental organizations' drop-in centers. In some cases, police even waited outside nongovernmental organization drop-in centers to arrest street children and working children when they arrived. The director of one drop-in center told us that on normal days twenty-five to thirty children visited his center, but on days when there was a police arrest campaign "the numbers might drop to four or five children, either because they have been arrested or because they are afraid that if they come to the center they will be arrested outside the center." 234 Police also use arrest campaigns to check if children living or working on the street have outstanding warrants, obtain information about crimes in the neighborhood, and force children to move on to other neighborhoods when they became too visible in a given neighborhood. Nasir Y., fifteen, described one such arrest in early June. "We were seven kids, sitting on the Nile, and the police came in an unmarked Fiat 128 and took us to the `Aguza police station. There had been a theft in the neighborhood, some girls had stolen gold and money and a mobile phone from a car, so the police were arresting everyone. They wanted to know where the girls were." The children were released the following dawn, after being held with adults in a crowded lockup. "The cell was big, two chambers and a passageway, with a lot of people. We were sleeping in the passage, but at least we were lying down. We got food from the other detainees. We didn't get food from the police. We were arrested during the daytime, taken to the Public Prosecution Office, returned to the station, and released before dawn. The Public Prosecution Office checked for previous charges and then said it was OK to release us."235 Khaled M., eleven, said, "Almost every other day there is a problem with the police. Day before yesterday the police grabbed me in al Manial [neighborhood]. They were looking for a particular kid so they grabbed a bunch of us, about five kids. They said, `Do you know a kid named Ahmad?' `Yes,' we said. They said, `If you bring us the kid we will let you go.' But instead we all ran away and they couldn't catch me."236 Lawyers and activists told Human Rights Watch that police sometimes used arrests to recruit children to work as informers, a practice commonly used with adult detainees. In some cases children were arrested while working. Marwan `I., thirteen, told Human Rights Watch that police arrested him during a campaign when he went to get food for colleagues at the bakery where he worked. "I saw someone calling me, and when I went over they arrested me and took me to the Shobra police station."237 `Abdullah A., fourteen, was arrested during his meal break. "A detective in a microbus arrested me. He told me I was a `bastard.' I was eating when they arrested me. I worked in a workshop as a mechanic. My family knows this."238 In other cases, police appeared to target for arrest children whose accent, dress, or location may have identified them as being originally from areas outside of Cairo. Many of these arrests took place in the vicinity of the main train station in Ramsis Square, near the al Azbekiya police lockup. Mansur N., fifteen, is originally from Banha but has been living in Cairo for five years. He described his most recent arrest, three days before our interview. "I was in Alexandria for a few days and I had just returned to the Ramsis train station in Cairo. I was with a friend and I had my shoe shine box with me. The police grabbed me and took me to al Azbekiya and put me in the `refrigerator'-it is a small room about three meters by three meters, with two windows, while they were waiting for the kashf [computer search] to say if I had any outstanding warrants. I was handcuffed to my friend. The computer said I was a juvenile so they sent me upstairs to the left with the kids." He was released after two days.239 Muhsin M., thirteen, was arrested as he left a train at the Ramsis station. "An officer grabbed me and asked me where I was from," he said. "I said [a Delta city] and he arrested me."240 Arrest campaigns frequently involve large numbers of children and therefore increase the likelihood that children arrested during these sweeps will be subjected to overcrowding, detention with adult criminal detainees, and other abuses during detention and transport.241 The director of the Ministry of Interior's General Administration for Juvenile Welfare Investigations acknowledged the connection between the policy of mass arrests and abuses of children's rights, but placed the blame on the local police directorates. "In the [adult] police stations there may be problems when they are facing the pressures of many arrests [of children] due to arrest campaigns," he said. "There are written instructions sent to all officers, but our staff capacities are not sufficient to supervise the entire country. We do trainings for the [governorate-level] police directorates. Some learn, and some don't."242 Detention without Prosecution Office Review Egyptian law requires that any person arrested by police be presented to the Public Prosecution Office within twenty-four hours.243 When arresting children the police must present the Public Prosecution Office with a social report on the child in addition to the police investigative report.244 These requirements are intended to prevent arbitrary arrest and detention and to ensure that the Public Prosecution Office has sufficient information on the child to make a decision in the child's best interests. Children we interviewed said that police regularly detained them for longer than twenty-four hours without presenting them to the prosecution office. In several cases we investigated police detained children for up to two weeks without police ever presenting them to the Public Prosecution Office. Nasir Y.'s account of his arrest in early July 2002 was typical of many children we spoke with. "I was in Ramsis [Square]. A mukhbir named [Y] grabbed me and a lot of other kids and tied us up with rope... I spent three days at al Azbekiya. I didn't go to the prosecution office. They put us on a train to the Sa`id. I stayed two days with my family and then rode the train back."245 Police arrested fourteen-year-old Yasir I. in an arrest campaign in June 2002 while he was working for a fruit seller. He was held at the Sayyida Zaynab police station for about a week. "Someone asked questions and wrote something down, but I don't know why," he said. "The questions were about age, name, things like that. They don't say why. Then they let me go. I didn't go any place outside the police station."246 Seventeen-year-old Reem G. was detained at the al Azbekiya juvenile lockup with her eight-month-old son for fifteen days in early 2002, apparently in an attempt to pressure her to give testimony in a murder case. "I didn't go to the prosecution office or to the police directorate. If I had I would have complained to the prosecutor. They just kept me there and hit me when I tried to complain. At the end they just said, `Go' and let me go."247 Lawyers, social workers, and other experts told us that some police officers used such illegal detentions against children they perceived were treated too leniently by the Public Prosecution Office. "When a child has been arrested many times the police may not send him to court, but instead keep him for a while and then release him," said an expert from one nongovernmental organization providing services to street children.248 Public prosecutors are also required by law to conduct regular visits to all places of detention.249 Justice Mohammad al Gindi, a former attorney general who is widely credited as the author of the Child Law, told us, "The prosecution office for juveniles is responsible for supervising all places of detention, including police stations. The problem is that the attorney general must ask for regular reports on police stations, prisons, and other institutions where children are held. When I was attorney general I asked for such reports, but it doesn't happen now."250 When asked about their last visit to the al Azbekiya juvenile lockup, prosecutors in the Cairo Public Prosecution Office for Juveniles told us they had never inspected that lockup or visited other police stations to inspect detention conditions for children, and said that they did not as a rule inspect any detention centers for children. "Who has the time?" one deputy prosecutor told us. "I'd lose the whole day coming and going."251 Children who are detained without prosecution office review are deprived of an important mechanism intended to minimize arbitrary arrest or detention and provide detainees an opportunity to make complaints against ill-treatment in police custody. They also lose access to the few potentially protective measures the Child Law specifies for children "vulnerable to delinquency" or "vulnerable to danger," because these measures must either be ordered by the prosecutor or by the court following a referral from the prosecutor.252 204 Of the 42,505 children arrested in 2001, 10,958 children were charged with being "vulnerable to delinquency." Ministry of Interior, Social Protection Sector, General Administration for Juvenile Welfare Investigation, The Administration's Efforts Year 2001 (Cairo: Ministry of Interior, 2002) (in Arabic), pp. 95-97; and Ministry of Interior, Social Protection Sector, General Administration for Juvenile Welfare Investigation, The Administration's Efforts Year 2000 (Cairo: Ministry of Interior, 2001) (in Arabic), p. 43. 205 Government of Egypt, Second Periodic Report of the Government of Egypt to the Committee on the Rights of the Child, November 11, 1999, CRC/C/65/Add.9, para. 192. 206 In cases where the child violates the terms of the probation, the court may order other measures specified in article 101 of the Child Law. Child Law 12 of 1996, Official Gazette no. 13 [adjunct], March 28, 1996 (in Arabic), articles 106-107. 207 In comparison, 921 children were charged with felonies and 30,626 were charged with misdemeanors in 2001. The 10,958 children arrested for being "vulnerable to delinquency," included 4,914 charged with mixing with other children "vulnerable to delinquency" or suspects, 3,662 charged with begging, 1,450 charged with sleeping in the streets, and 757 children charged with habitual truancy. General Administration for Juvenile Welfare Investigation, The Administration's Efforts Year 2001, pp. 95-97; and General Administration for Juvenile Welfare Investigation, The Administration's Efforts Year 2000, p. 43. 208 Ministry of Interior statistics list 185 "cases," of arrests for being "vulnerable to danger" in 2001 and no cases in 2000. General Administration for Juvenile Welfare Investigation, The Administration's Efforts Year 2001, p. 91. 209 The 2000 figure appears to significantly under report arrests in all three Greater Cairo governorates and may be a reflection of the arbitrary manner in which the Ministry of Interior categorizes children as "vulnerable to delinquency." It appears in a chart labeled "Distribution of Cases of Vulnerable to Delinquency by the Governorates of the Republic for Year 2000" that lists eight categories of conduct considered "vulnerable to delinquency," but lists underneath each category the term "misdemeanor," although these categories are not misdemeanors and are not included in a separate chart of cases of misdemeanors. General Administration for Juvenile Welfare Investigation, The Administration's Efforts Year 2001, p. 97; and General Administration for Juvenile Welfare Investigation, The Administration's Efforts Year 2000, p. 43. 210 Ministerial Decree 15511 of 2000 restructured the Ministry of Interior's existing Administration for Juvenile Police, making it a General Administration for Juvenile Welfare Investigations headed by an assistant minister with the rank of general. Human Rights Watch interview with General Sayyed Mohammadayn, director, General Administration for Juvenile Welfare Investigation, Ministry of Interior, Cairo, Egypt, July 27, 2002; and Brigadier Yasir Abu Shahdi, director, Cairo Province Police Directorate's al Azbekiya Juvenile Welfare facility, July 27, 2002. 211 Child Law 31 of 1974, Official Gazette no. 20, May 16, 1974, (in Arabic), articles 2-4. For a critique of Child Law 31 of 1974 and discussion of its similarities with Child Law 12 of 1996, see Dr. Adel Azer and Imam Bibars, Protecting Vulnerable Children: the Case of Juvenile Delinquents, Draft, (Cairo: UNICEF Egypt Country Office, 1998), pp. 4-11. 212 Government of Egypt, Second Periodic Report of the Government of Egypt to the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child (New York: United Nations, September 18, 1998), CR/C/65/Add.9, paras. 187-207. 213 See, for example, the United Nations Guidelines for the Prevention of Juvenile Delinquency (The Riyadh Guidelines), G.A. Res. 45/112, annex, 45 U.N.GAOR Supp. (no. 49A), U.N. Doc A/45/49/ (1990), para. 56; Committee on the Rights of the Child, Concluding Observations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child: Chile, U.N. Doc. CRC/C/15/Add.173 (2002), para. 53; and Committee on the Rights of the Child, Concluding Observations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child: Nigeria, U.N. Doc. CRC/C/15/Add.61 (1996), para. 21. 214 Convention on the Rights of the Child, article. 18(2). 216 According to the law's chief architect, the provision on children "vulnerable to danger" was added when visiting juvenile justice experts pointed out that the Child Law lacked provisions for children at risk and treated all children as juvenile offenders. Human Rights Watch interview with Judge Mohammad al Gindi, member of the Technical Committee of the National Council for Childhood and Motherhood, Heliopolis, Egypt, July 28, 2002. 217 Article 94 of the Child Law sets the age of criminal responsibility at seven years. See Appendix A for the full definition of categories of children considered "vulnerable to delinquency." Child Law, articles 94, 96, 97, 99. 218 The exceptions are provisions stating that no action should be taken against an incorrigible child without parental permission and setting standards for determinations of mental defect or illness. Child Law, articles 96(7) and 99. 219 Of 10,958 arrests of children for being "vulnerable to delinquency," 4,914 were for "mixing with suspect persons," 3,662 were for "begging," 1,450 were for "sleeping in the streets," and 757 were for "habitual truancy." Ninety-seven percent of the 3,360 arrests of children in 2001 by the Cairo Police Directorate for being "vulnerable to delinquency" were for four categories: "begging" (1727), "mixing with suspects" (775), "sleeping in the streets" (715), and "habitual truancy" (32). General Administration for Juvenile Welfare Investigation, The Administration's Efforts Year 2001, pp. 97, 105. 220 Law 49 of 1933 on Begging, article 1. 221 The law excludes skilled persons or crafts persons who cannot find work and specifies that gambling, deviance, fortune telling, and similar activities are not considered legal livelihoods. Law 98 of 1945 on Vagrants and Suspect Persons (amended), articles 1, 4. 222 Law 98 of 1945 on Vagrants and Suspect Persons (amended), article 5. 223 See Appendix A for the full definition of "vulnerable to danger." Prime Ministerial Decree 3452 of 1997 enacting the Executive Statute of Child Law 12 of 1996, Official Gazette no. 48 [adjunct], November 27, 1997, article 203. 224 Ministry of Interior statistics list 185 cases of arrests for being "vulnerable to danger" in 2001 and no cases in 2000. General Administration for Juvenile Welfare Investigation, The Administration's Efforts Year 2001, p. 91. 225 Egyptian Constitution, article 41; Code of Criminal Procedures (Law 150 of 1950) [amended] (in Arabic), article 34. 226 According to the nongovernmental Egyptian Organization for Human Rights, 2001 witnessed a marked increase in arrest campaigns against citizens who did not belong to any political trend in order "to force the citizen to confess to a crime or as a favor to a third party." EOHR, "The Right to Freedom and Personal Integrity," in EOHR, Annual Report 2001, (Cairo: Egyptian Organization for Human Rights, 2002), Part II Chapter 2, (retrieved November 15, 2002 http://www.eohr.org/ar/annual/2002/p2-2.htm). 227 The Child Law does not specify arrest procedures for children "vulnerable to danger" but 228 Despite Abu Shahdi's assertion that police only arrest some of the children they "gathered" in this manner, all children subjected to this process are detained for at least a day and sometimes several days while police check for outstanding warrants against them. Human Rights Watch interview with Brigadier Yasir Abu Shahdi 229 According to the director of the Ministry of Interior's General Administration for Juvenile Welfare Investigation, police typically arrest "twenty to thirty children" during a campaign. Human Rights Watch interview with General Mohammadayn. 230 Human Rights Watch interview with Brigadier Yasir Abu Shahdi. 231 Human Rights Watch interview with police officer with rank of amin al shorta, Bulaq al Dakrur Police Station, Cairo, Egypt, July 24, 2002. Name not given. 232 Transcript of Remarks, Association for Human Rights Legal Aid Conference on Children in Detention, Cairo, Egypt, May 30, 2002. 233 Human Rights Watch interview, Cairo, Egypt, July 23, 2002. Name withheld by request. 234 Human Rights Watch interview, Cairo, Egypt, July 11, 2002. Name withheld by request. 235 Human Rights Watch interview with Nasir Y., Cairo, Egypt, July 9, 2002. 236 Human Rights Watch interview with Khaled M., Cairo, Egypt, July 9, 2002. 237 Human Rights Watch interview with Marwan `I., Cairo, Egypt, July 27, 2002. 238 Human Rights Watch interview with `Abdullah A., Cairo, Egypt, July 27, 2002. 239 Human Rights Watch interview with Mansur N., Cairo, Egypt, July 10, 2002. 240 Human Rights Watch interview with Muhsin M., Cairo, Egypt, July 27, 2002. 242 Human Rights Watch interview with General Mohammadayn. 243 Code of Criminal Procedures, article 36. 244 Human Rights Watch interview with General Sayyed Mohammadayn, Cairo, Egypt, July 27, 2002. 245 Human Rights Watch interview with Nasir Y. 246 Human Rights Watch interview with Yasir I., Cairo, Egypt, July 9, 2002. 247 Human Rights Watch interview with Reem G., Cairo, Egypt, July 15, 2002. 248 Human Rights Watch interview, Cairo, Egypt, July 23, 2002. Name withheld by request. 249 See Prisons Law 396 of 1956, articles 85-86; Attorney General Circular 11 of 1999 regarding periodic unannounced inspection of places of detention, October 25, 1999; and Attorney General Decree 837 of 1999 amending some provisions regarding criminal matters of the judicial directives to public prosecution offices (article 1749). 250 Al Gindi also serves on the Technical Committee of the National Council for Childhood and Motherhood, and directs the al Horriya Center in Alexandria, a facility that provides residential care for street children and juvenile offenders. Human Rights Watch interview with Mohammad al Gindi. 251 Human Rights Watch interview with members of the Cairo Public Prosecution Office for Juveniles, Cairo, Egypt, July 3, 2002. Name not given. 252 These measures include placement in the custody of a qualified parent or guardian, or placement in a vocational training center, a specialized hospital, or a social welfare institution. Child Law, articles 98, 101-108; Prime Ministerial Decree 3452 of 1997, articles 204- 205.
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