A rights group has issued a plea to Tunisian ministers to end the banishment of a Tunisian journalist and political activist.
Human Rights Watch sent a letter to Tunisian Minister of Justice Béchir Tekkari and Minister of Interior Rafeek Belhaj lobbying for the journalist’s exile to end.
Tunisian authorities banished political activist and journalist Abdallah Zouari to the remote village of Zarzis in 2004, after being released from prison the same year. Zourari was convicted on charges of plotting overthrow the state in 1992 by a Tunisian military court.
He was sentenced to eleven years in prison, and a ‘complementary sentence’ of five years of internal exile after his release.
“We want to end this arbitrary practice of keeping this person from his family, from the city he lives in,” Eric Goldstein, Human Rights Watch’s research director for the Middle East and North Africa told The Media Line. “It’s an arbitrary practice imposed on him for his political activism and his journalism.”
“In Tunisian law, when you are judged and sentenced, the judge often imposes a prison term on you, and additionally what they call a ‘complementary sentence,’” he said. “After you are released from prison, the police can determine that you have to stay in your neighborhood, and you can’t leave without permission.”
Zouari’s prison sentence ended on June 6 2002, although he was arrested again in October 2003 and was sentenced to another thirteen months in prison. Following his release in September 2004, he was banished to a remote Tunisian village, nearly 300 miles from his family, who live in Tunis.
It is common practice in Tunisia for a ‘complementary sentence’ to be imposed after a convict is released from jail. However, this usually entails being banished to one’s own neighborhood or city, rather than an isolated village.
“He has been forced to live in this place, by the police, for seven years,” Goldstein explained. “The first five years it was a result of the sentence imposed by the judge. For the last two years, it was arbitrary in the sense that, when that ended period ended, the police summoned him and told him you have to stay here beyond the complementary sentence because we say so.”
When Zouari demanded an explanation, the police chief replied that his orders came “from above.”
Because Zouari was not given any justification as to why his banishment was extended, the rights group fears that as the end of the sentence approaches, the term of his exile will be once again lengthened.
“And now that period is coming to an end, because they specified that it would last 26 months,” said Goldstein. “We’re calling for an end to this arbitrary treatment, and we ask that he is given his freedom of movement.”