Video of Mostafa el-Fiqqi before the revolution defending the extension of the emergency law, the draconian legal framework Mubarak used to justify repression, torture, kidnapping and detention of activists all throughout his reign.

This is NOT the man Egypt should nominate for the Arab League secretary general post.

Egypt on Monday extended a controversial decades-old state of emergency by two years despite pledges to replace it by new legislation, in a move slammed by rights groups as anti-constitutional.
“Parliament has accepted during its afternoon session today the decision by the president of the republic to extend the state of emergency for two years starting from June 1, or until a new terror law is drafted, whichever comes first,” the state news agency MENA said.
“It was passed with 305 votes in favor and 103 against,” Issam al-Mokhtar, an MP with the Muslim Brotherhood, told AFP by telephone.
The state of emergency was first imposed in 1981 after the assassination by Islamists of president Anwar Sadat and has been repeatedly renewed since then despite protests from rights groups and regime opponents.
Prime Minister Ahmad Nazif pledged to “only use the law in the fight against terrorism… and to protect the security of the nation and its citizens,” MENA reported.
“The government… has only used the articles of the law strictly for the goals intended, namely the fight against terrorism,” Nazif told parliament.
Last year, Judicial and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Mufid Shehab said the state of emergency would end in 2008, even if the new anti-terror law meant to replace it was not ready.

The Egyptian government plans a one-year extension to an emergency law that grants police sweeping powers of arrest, an official said on Sunday.
Hours earlier security forces detained 18 members of the opposition Muslim Brotherhood.
The official, who asked not to be named, said the government would shortly present to parliament a bill to extend the emergency law, which expires at the end of the month, after failing to prepare in time an anti-terrorism law that would encapsulate similar powers.
The emergency law, which has been in force since 1981, allows the police to hold people without charge for long periods and enables the authorities to refer civilians to military courts, where defendants have fewer rights.
Human rights groups say some detainees have been in custody more than 10 years without trial or charge. Along with the opposition, they accuse the government of abusing the emergency law to target political dissidents and predict it will continue the same practices when the anti-terrorism law is passed. The government denies these charges.
“Comparing the emergency law and the anti-terrorism law is like comparing the devil and the deep blue sea,” Muhammad Habib, the Muslim Brotherhood deputy leader, told Reuters.
Hafez Abu Seada, secretary general of the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights, said people had spent years in jail in defiance of court rulings that they be freed.
“There is no real political will to end the emergency law in Egypt,” Abu Seada told Reuters.
The government said two years ago it would introduce the anti-terrorism bill before the emergency law expired, but it has not yet distributed any draft.