Files from at least 5,000 lawsuits have mysteriously disappeared from Egyptian courts and prosecution offices over the past two years, the ministry of justice announced after its latest housecleaning operation.
Because of this negligence, the ministry is currently facing scores of claims for damages from individuals and corporations whose legal documents were lost, reported the Egyptian Gazette on Saturday.
This prompted the ministry to circulate a strongly worded memo to all courts and prosecution offices asking them to tighten the security of their filing systems.
Although a hefty part of the files are either stolen or lost while being transported from one court to another, the paper said that bad storage and archiving were also responsible for destroying a great number of important legal documents.
Because most courts are already overcrowded and overstaffed, there is no other place to store files and documents than basements, which are humid and rat-infested.
“Needless to say the repeated rhetoric about the ministry of justice's efforts to update and computerize the filing systems in courts have been reduced to a limited experiment in the North Cairo and Ismailia courts,” said the paper.
Also, a thief apparently stole some 25 files from the Helwan prosecution office.
The office staff formed a committee to identify the stolen files in an effort to track down the culprit.
According to the paper, investigations revealed that a goon broke into the office at night to steal the file of a colleague who confessed that he planned to commit murder. He could not find the file, so he stole others that happened to be in the office out of sheer pique.
A few years ago, the ministry launched a project to save all finished cases on microfilm in order to enable litigants to obtain transcripts of their cases whenever they wanted them.
The ministry is also trying to computerize its filing system to prevent any tampering with files from the moment they enter prosecution offices.
The ministries of justice and interior are also mulling a proposal to train a special police force specialized in guarding court and prosecution premises as well as being responsible for the transfer and safekeeping of exhibits and legal documents, said the paper.
Chief cassation prosecutor Amr Yehia said Egyptian courts still used very anachronistic systems of filing and archiving.
"We want an appropriate place where files can be stored, instead of stacking them in humid basements where they could be spoiled.” – Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
