Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has announced on Monday lifting the four years-long nationwide state of emergency.
The state of emergency had been declared since the April 2017 bombings of two Coptic churches by an affiliate of the ISIL (ISIS) armed group that killed more than 40 people and wounded dozens more.
The country has been grappling with armed attacks largely concentrated in the northern Sinai Peninsula but occasionally striking other parts of the country, too.
“Egypt has become, thanks to its great people and its loyal men, an oasis of security and stability in the region, this is why I decided to cancel the renewal of the state of emergency throughout the country,” el-Sisi said on Facebook on Monday evening.
Egypt’s state of emergency allowed the authorities to make arrests and search people’s homes without warrants.
Egypt has always witnessed large-scale implementations of emergency law.
Before the 2011 revolution, the state of emergency had already been in force since 1981 and had been renewed by the president every two years.
Terminating the state of emergency was a major demand during Egyptian revolution in January 2011.
After the revolution, Egypt lived without a state of emergency for 13 months before drowning in another political and security crisis amid the conflict between the military and the Muslim Brotherhood, which represented the ruling majority back then.
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