Tunisia tends heavy sentences to prominent opposition figures

In the latest sign of improving repression in what was formerly the only Arab democracy, a court in Tunisia exerted heavy sentences to new opposition figures condemned for conspiracy against state security, the country’s official agency of the country announced on Saturday.

Right’s defense groups and lawyers have called backdrop.

Forty people had been charged in the case, including opposition leaders, lawyers, businessmen, rights activists and journalists. The court pronounced prison terms from 13 to 66 years old, the news agency said TAP, citing a legal official. The agency gave no other details.

“All these heavy sentences aim to intimidate politicians, public opinion and activists in order to end political life in Tunisia,” said Fawzi Jaballah, one of the lawyers for defendants. “From the start, this case has never been proven with concrete evidence.”

Tunisia, in North Africa, was the birthplace of the Arab Spring uprisings against the authoritarian regime which began at the end of 2010 and crossed a large part of the Arab world. But the country gradually went back to authoritarianism and repression since President Kais Saiey moved to the Institute of a single man in 2021.

During the decade after the uprising, Tunisia managed to establish democratic elections, a new freed from the media and a freedom of expression, allowing manifestations and citizen complaints to flourish. But the economy has stagnated, state finances have deteriorated, inequalities have remained or in-depth, and Tunisians have become more and more divided on the power that political Islamists had accumulated during the post-revolution years.

This has led many Tunisians to embrace Mr. Saied and his promises of change.

Almost four years after his seizure, however, Mr. Sieed wasted his popularity on the decisions which, according to the experts, have only aggravated the economic crisis and brought an ever more loaded repression.