Tunisia: Prominent Journalist Arbitrarily Detained
Mohamed Boughalleb is a prominent Tunisian journalist. He has been vocal in frequently criticizing the president and other officials during TV and radio shows including accusing them of bad governance and corruption. Despite serving his unjust eight months prison sentence, Mohamed Boughalleb remains arbitrarily detained in relation to a separate case. In April 2024, a judge ordered his pre-trial detention on bogus charges of spreading false news on the basis of Article 24 of Decree Law 2022-54 on Cybercrimes. He is accused of insulting an individual on his social media page. However, according to his lawyers, he was not the author of the post in question or the owner of the social media page. On 11 February 2025, the Tunis Cassation Court is scheduled to decide whether to refer this case to trial or drop the charges against him. He risks five years in prison and a fine of 50,000 Dinars (around 16,000 USD) under Article 24 which criminalizes using telecommunications networks to produce, send, or disseminate “fake news,” “false data,” “false rumours,” or “fake, falsified, or falsely attributed documents” to harm, defame, or incite violence against others, or to undermine public safety or national defence, spread fear, or incite hatred.
Since May 2024, Tunisian authorities have further ramped up their crackdown on media and the right to freedom of expression, convicting two journalists and a media channel founder and sentencing them to prison terms, detaining and prosecuting another media figure and intimidating private media. On 22 May, the Tunis First Instance Court sentenced Borhen Bsaies and Mourad Zeghidi, both prominent journalists, to a year in prison under article 24 of Decree-Law 2022-54 on Cybercrimes, in separate cases. The next day, the same court handed media founder and tech activist Houssem Hajlaoui a nine-month suspended prison sentence in relation to his online expression after detaining him for 11 days. On 11 May 2024 , Sonia Dahmani, a lawyer and media commentator and Bsaies’ and Zeghidi’s colleague on the popular daily program “Emission Impossible” on the private radio station IFM, was also arrested under Decree-Law 2022-54 on Cybercrimes. On 6 July 2024, the Tunis Court of First Instance sentenced Sonia Dahmani to a year in prison, reduced to eight months in appeal, for making an ironic comment on the situation of migrants in Tunisia during a TV show. On 24 October 2024, the same court sentenced her to an additional two years in prison in a separate case for highlighting racist and discriminatory practices in Tunisia. All three remained arbitrarily detained.
Since its promulgation in September 2022, authorities have been using Decree-Law 2022-54 to target individuals exercising their right to freedom of expression. Decree-Law 2022-54 contravenes human rights treaties including the provisions of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights to which Tunisia is a state party. Both Article 9 of the Charter and Article 19 of the Covenant guarantee the right to freedom of expression. Restrictions on the right based on ambiguous, overly broad terms such as “fake news” and other repressive provisions of the cybercrime law fail to meet the requirements of legality, necessity and proportionality.
On 25 July 2021, President Kais Saied claimed emergency powers, claiming these were granted to him by Tunisia’s 2014 Constitution. Since February 2022, the human rights situation in Tunisia has been rapidly deteriorating as several opposition figures, dissidents, perceived enemies of the president and critics of the government have been targeted and harassed. Authorities have carried out successive waves of arrests targeted political opponents and perceived critics of President Kais Saied. Over 70 people, including political opponents, lawyers, journalists, activists and human rights defenders have been subjected to arbitrary prosecutions and/or arbitrary detention since the end of 2022 in connection with the exercise of their internationally guaranteed rights such as the rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association. The crackdown on opposition and critics is a flagrant attack on the rule of law and human rights including the rights to freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly in Tunisia, rights protected under Articles 19, 21 and 22 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and Articles 9, 10 and 11 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights.