{Ruling on transfer of Tiran and Sanafir comes a week after parliament backed plans to hand them back to Saudi Arabia.}<\/p>\n
Egypt’s top constitutional court has ruled to halt all verdicts on an islands transfer deal until it makes a decision on the constitutionality of the agreement, state media said.<\/p>\n
Wednesday’s ruling came a week after Egypt’s parliament backed plans to hand over two uninhabited Red Sea islands to Saudi Arabia under an accord that has attracted widespread public criticism.<\/p>\n
President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi must still ratify the agreement. <\/p>\n
Parliamentary leaders and government lawyers say the House of Representatives is the only entity allowed to rule on matters of sovereignty, but it has been opposed by one court.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, an Egyptian court ruled that previous judicial decisions in favour of transferring the two islands were invalid, according to a judicial official and a lawyer.<\/p>\n
The government says the two islands, Tiran and Sanafir, belong to Saudi Arabia but had been leased to Egypt in the 1950s.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, an administrative court ruled that all judicial decisions taken to date by the urgent matters court would be considered invalid.<\/p>\n
“The ruling signifies that the land is Egyptian,” said Khaled Ali, a lawyer who argued in the administrative court that the islands belonged to Egypt.<\/p>\n
The verdict would affirm that any attempt to transfer the islands would be considered unconstitutional “even if the president ratified the agreement”, Ali said.<\/p>\n
The deal sparked rare street protests after it was signed last year, with President Sisi accused of having sold the islands to Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n
“Now, the ball is in the president’s court,” Ali said.<\/p>\n
Source:Al Jazeera<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{Ruling on transfer of Tiran and Sanafir comes a week after parliament backed plans to hand them back to Saudi Arabia.} Egypt’s top constitutional court has ruled to halt all verdicts on an islands transfer deal until it makes a decision on the constitutionality of the agreement, state media said. Wednesday’s ruling came a week […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[2474],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-35273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-al-jazeera"],"bylines":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35273\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35273"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=35273"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=35273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}