TRIBUNAL OF ASSIOUT JUDGMENT ON APPEAL, 20 MAY 1900 STATE REPRESENTATIVE v. OMAR GAD ALLAH & OTHERS (C. Cr. Pr. Chap. III [Decree 28 May 1895] Arts. 14, 15) Order to file without further proceedings (ordre de classement sans suite)—Resumption of prosecution—Fresh charges. Arts. 14 and 15 of Chap. III C. Cr. Pr. (Decree 28 May 1895) are evidently to be read together. It follows that an order to file without further proceedings (ordre de classement sans suite) does not form a bar to the reopening of the prosecution, even where no fresh charges are adduced, unless the order was made in one of the two cases mentioned in Art. 14, that is to say, unless either a warrant of apprehension or a warrant of arrest had been issued. The object of the legislator, in establishing this restriction, was presumably to afford greater protection to persons who have already been the object of measures of exceptional severity, than to those whose liberty has not yet been interfered with. The argument, that the legislator should have protected all accused persons equally, is irrelevant, since the duty of the Courts is limited to applying the law in the state in which it exists (¹). (¹) The Court of Cassation decided by judgments of 19 December 1896 (El-Cada, IV, 65) and 23 April 1898 (El-Cada V, 322) that there is no reason why the Parquet, after having ordered the papers in a case to be filed, should not reopen the prosecution. But that opinion has now been modified, and many recent decisions of the Court of Cassation and of the Court of Appeal have laid down that the order to file operates as a bar to the resumption of criminal proceedings (unless fresh charges are forthcoming), whenever there has been any process of preliminary examination by the Parquet (c.f. Cassation 18 November 1899, and 31 March 1900 : Appeal 27 December 1899 and 15 May 1900 (pp. 243 follg. supra). The judgment above summarised of the Tribunal of Assiout, according to which an order to file does not thus operate as a bar unless a warrant of apprehension or of arrest had previously been issued, is based upon the actual terms employed by the legislator, which in the opinion of such Court are so explicit as to preclude the possibility of extending their application. The Courts of Cassation and Appeal, on the other hand, relying upon considerations of a general character derived from the spirit rather than the letter of the law, apply the principle by analogy to other cases not expressly mentioned in the articles in question.