Coll 15/3(1) 'Egypt. Abolition of Capitulations in Montreux Conference and Convention 1937' [‎302r] (608/1220)

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(11a) Prisons.
75. The procurator-general will supervise prisons or penitentiaries in which
foreigners are detained. He shall, in addition, have free access at all times to
any other place wherein a foreigner may be detained (article 22 of the R.O.J.).
(11b) Prison Reglement.
Document A stated :—
“ In view of the greater number and the different type of Mixed Court
prisoners who will in future serve their sentences in Egypt, it is recognised
that some modification may be required to existing Prison Reglement of
March 1914.”
Owing to pressure of work on Bedawi Pasha An Ottoman title used after the names of certain provincial governors, high-ranking officials and military commanders. , the Egyptian Government failed
to come to any conclusions before the conference with regard to the modification
of the Prison Reglement (suggestions for this purpose made by Sir A. Keown
Boyd, the late Director-General of the European Department of the Egyptian
Ministry of the Interior, were received by them during the conference). Further,
the delegations of the other capitulatory Powers showed little interest in the
question, and the pressure of work on other more important questions resulted in
this matter being left over. The Egyptian delegation promised orally to the
United Kingdom delegation, who did not fail to press them privately on this
question, that foreigners sentenced to imprisonment should not be kept at any
prisons other than the two modern ones at Cairo and Alexandria, and that they
would consider themselves bound by Document A to consult His Majesty's
Government before they modified the Prison Reglement.
( 12 ) Statut Personnel.
76. The agreement in Document A was that, in principle, statut personnel
cases should go before the Mixed Courts, but that if a majority of the Powers
at the conference expressed a desire to reserve consular courts to deal with statut
personnel cases, the convention should contain an article permitting them to
do so. (This possibility was foreshadowed in the annex to article 13 of the
Treaty of Alliance.) At the time Document A was drawn up, the arguments on
the merits for and against a reservation of statut personnel seemed to be fairly
evenly balanced, but it was anticipated that the French, Italians and Greeks
would certainly desire it. In between January and the date of the conference
the views entertained in the Foreign Office and at the Embassy in Cairo moved
in the direction of the desirability of the reservation of statut personnel. It was
therefore a matter of surprise to find at the conference that the French, Italian
and Greek delegations were still entirely uncertain in their minds as to whether
they were in favour of the reservation of statut personnel or not. Further, there
was a great reluctance on all their parts to demand a right of reservation.
Apparently they thought, quite erroneously, that this was a demand which the
Egyptians would only accede to with reluctance, and that they would be
exhausting their bargaining power by making it, whereas, in fact, the Egyptians
were nearly indifferent upon this point. These three delegations were much
keener on securing (as was also contemplated in Document A) that in matters of
statut personnel the foreign national law should always be applied, even
the transitional period, and that the Egyptians should have prepared before 1949
a proper code for application by the national civil courts for foreign statut
personnel cases. In the end the Gordian knot was cut by joint proposals in
both the above senses being put forward by the United Kingdom, French, Grees.
and Italian delegations.
77. In view of the facts that (i) the parties to a statut personnel sui may
easily be of different nationality; (ii) any one of these parties may possess moie
than one nationalitv; and (iii) that the rules applied in different countries o
determine the national law to be applied in statut personnel cases differ widely,
it was clearly necessary that there should be a set of rules which should determine
( a ) w hat was statut personnel and what was not; (5) whether a statu person
case raust be deemed to be a foreign case (coming before the Mixed oi consu c
courts) or an Egyptian one (coming before the Egyptian religious cou ),
(^ assuming the case to be a foreign case, determining whether i was o
fe U within the jurisdiction of the Mixed Courts or within that of the consulai
court of a Power which had reserved statut personnel jurisdic 10 , ( )