Egypt's parliament agreed on Sunday to a two-year extension of emergency law requested by the government while it prepares replacement anti-terrorism laws.
The Muslim Brotherhood, the strongest opposition force, said there was no justification for extending the law, which President Hosni Mubarak last year promised to substitute with anti-terrorism legislation.
Mubarak had already signalled that the law would be extended before bombers killed 18 people in the Red Sea resort of Dahab last week and attacked a police station and multinational peace force in the Sinai peninsula.
Emergency law has been in force since October 1981, when Islamist militants assassinated President Anwar Sadat and Mubarak took office. It gives the government wide powers to detain people without charge and restrict civil liberties.
Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif asked parliament to approve emergency laws for another two years or until the government had prepared the anti-terrorism law.
Two years "was not long when measured against the dangers which threaten us and our future", he told the chamber. "We will never use the emergency law other than to protect the citizen and the security of the nation and combat terrorism," he said.
Emergency law was due to lapse at the beginning of June. Parliamentary approval of the extension was a foregone conclusion because the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) controls more than two thirds of the seats.
BROTHERHOOD OPPOSED: But 91 members, a quarter of the 378 lawmakers in attendance, opposed the extension. Most of the opponents were from the Muslim Brotherhood, which holds nearly a fifth of the seats in parliament.
"They use (the law) to silence and oppress the opposition," Brotherhood deputy leader Mohamed Habib said.
He said the government had had enough time since September, when Mubarak pledged to replace the emergency law, to draft the anti-terrorism legislation.
"If they had wanted to end the state of emergency and to present an alternative draft law, they could have done that," he told Reuters.
The independent Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights (EOHR), the main rights group, also condemned the extension, saying emergency law gave the executive too much power and negated many civil rights enshrined in the constitution.
"The Egyptian government is trying vigorously to convert emergency law from exceptional law into permanent law... The EOHR calls on President Mubarak to fulfil his electoral promise," the organisation said in a statement.
Mubarak said this year that drafting anti-terrorism laws to replace the emergency law could take 18 months to two years and the government could not allow a gap between the two.
Opposition members, expecting the request, came to Sunday's session wearing black sashes inscribed "No to Emergency Law".
Under emergency law, the government is holding at least 10,000 people without charge, human rights groups say.
The United States, a major aid donor to Egypt, called last year for the abolition of emergency law, among other political changes, as part of its campaign for reform in the Arab world.
But the US campaign has lost much of its momentum, partly because of electoral successes by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Hamas in the Palestinian territories, analysts say.
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