Houthi Efforts to Replace 10,000 Lawyers with "Sharia agents"
English - Saturday 19 December 2020 الساعة 10:32 am
Sanaa, NewsYemen, Ahmed Fouad:
The Houthi militia - the Iranian arm in Yemen - tends to abolish the jobs of civil society organizations and professional unions, and replace them with names and entities of an unknown nature, reminiscent of what Yemen was before the Yemeni revolution on September 26, 1962.
Government sources in Sana'a revealed that the Houthi militia allegedly obtained a license from the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor, allowing the establishment of a trade union entity for whom it called (Sharia agents), to work in the corridors of the courts, in an attempt to undermine and abolish the constitutional and legal role of the legal profession, in which more than ten thousand work in its court Lawyer and lawyer distributed in all directorates and courts of the Republic.
The Yemeni Bar Association considered the statements issued by the Ministry of Social Affairs to (Sharia agents) a crude violation of the provisions and texts of the Constitution and the laws in force, including the Procedural Law, the Criminal Procedures Law on Advocacy.
Noting that all the laws “all restricted the right of defense to practitioners of the legal profession, which the constitution has specified and stipulated and distinguished on its own by affirming in Article (151) thereof that the legal profession is regulated by a special law, which was from the legislator to approve the law in force No. (31) of 1999 ".
He drew attention to the spread of lawyers in all governorates and districts and isolation of the republic, and before all courts and prosecution offices of various types and degrees spread at the level of all directorates, as the total number of lawyers registered in the Syndicate’s schedules until the end of last November 2020 amounted to more than ten thousand lawyers and lawyers distributed in all directorates and the courts of the republic. "
In a statement, the Yemeni Bar Association stated, "As for Sharia agents who were practicing the profession before the 1970s, the Yemeni legislator closed the door to this group after opening the doors of universities and the spread of the faculties of Sharia, Law and Law at the level of most Yemeni governorates and increasing the number of graduates from them."
Noting that the Yemeni legislator has dealt with the conditions of legal case agents (Sharia agents) working in accordance with the previous laws, according to a special regulation issued under the Minister of Justice Decision No. (137) of June 16, 2009.
The Bar Association said that, “and in implementation of the provisions of the law and this regulation, the Bar Association has opened the records and tables of case agents (Sharia agents). The same committee for registration in the bar shall accept and register those who apply to it and meet the legal and regulatory conditions and enroll them in its tables designated for that.”
In order to face these developments, the Bar Association announced that the Bar Council would be in a permanent session, and that some lawyers had confronted these intruders before the courts and the prosecution “and submitted defenses that they did not qualify and denied their legal right to represent any party to the cases before the courts and prosecution offices.”
Commenting on these developments, Yemeni lawyer Salah Ahmed Hamzah believes that "a professional union such as a bar association is not formed and has no status except by law," considering that the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor granted a license to a union that operates in judicial work. "This is a precedent that no one of the worlds has ever seen! ! ”, Adding on his Facebook page:“ My personal conviction is that there is a systematic act to destroy state institutions and authority, whether judicial, legislative or executive. ”
