Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders Annual Report 2002 - Tunisia
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Date:
26 March 2003
Harassment of LTDH and its members
Legal proceedings against LTDH and obstacles to its activities40
The legal proceedings instigated against the Tunisian League for Human Rights (Ligue tunisienne des droits de l'Homme – LTDH) in November 2000 are still pending. There has been no reaction to the appeal lodged by the LTDH Executive Committee with the Court of Cassation after the Tunis Appeals Court, on 21st June 2001 upheld the decision of the Court of First Instance to cancel all decisions taken by the last LTDH congress (October 2000).
Further, LTDH is continually hampered, especially in organising congresses for its sections. During the congress of the Gabès Section on 19th October 2002, an activist of the RCD (Rassemblement constitutionnel démocratique), the party in power, created trouble by assaulting a LTDH member. As a result of this incident the police surrounded the meeting room, made it impossible to vote and, finally, the congress was cancelled. It was held, normally, on 1st December 2002.
On 18th July, the regional officials of the Mahdia Governate told the leaders of the LTDH Section in Mahdia that the congress scheduled for 19th July at the local headquarters of UGTT (Union générale des travailleurs tunisiens – Tunisian labour union) was prohibited.
Shortly after the Jendouba Section held its congress in a trade union office in November, UGTT sent out a circular forbidding the rental of its premises to any association.
LTDH sections have enormous problems in finding office space. Only 10 of the League's 40 sections have offices. Owners are pressured into not renting office space to LTDH. The owner of offices in Monastir, for instance, filed charges against LTDH in order to terminate a 2-year office rental contract just after it had been signed. She said that she did not feel of sound mind when she signed it. On 2nd June 2002, the day the offices were to be opened, the police came to expel the members of the section, remove the sign plate, change the locks and then a policeman was posted inside the office to prevent members from entering. The solidarity meeting that was supposed to be held at Ksibet El Mediouni on 16 June was overrun by policemen. Police blockades prevented the participants from entering the town; some participants were beaten. At the end of 2002, the case was still pending.
Legal proceedings against and harassment of Mr. Mokhtar Trifi and Mr. Slaheddine Jourchi41
The investigation of Mr. Mokhtar Trifi, lawyer and LTDH President in March 2001 for "spreading false information that could disturb public order" and "failure to comply with a judicial decision" is still pending. The same applies to the investigation opened in December 2000 against Mr. Slaheddine Jourchi, LTDH Vice President, for "spreading false information" and "failure to comply with a judicial decision".
Further, on 7th February 2002, Mr. Trifi's office was robbed. The door to his office had been forced open and his files, damaged. The office of a colleague, who works for the same law firm, was not touched. Apparently no documents were stolen.
Defamatory campaign against Mrs. Souhayr Belhassen42
In September and October 2001, a seething defamatory campaign was launched against Mrs. Souhayr Belhassen, LTDH Vice President, after she participated in an international investigative mission mandated by FIDH and the Human Rights Alliance on the human rights situation in Iraq. She was accused of "betraying the Arab cause". The campaign eased off in 2002 but picked up again in November during the Jendouba Section LTDH congress.
Harassment of Mr. Anouar Kousri
The police are still constantly patrolling in front of the home of Mr. Anouar Kousri, lawyer and LTDH Vice President, and following him everywhere he goes by car. Furthermore, his clients are subjected to intimidation in order to dissuade them from seeking his counsel.
Legal proceedings against and harassment of Mr. Khémaïs Ksila43
On 12th February 2002, Mr. Khémaïs Ksila, LTDH Secretary General, who lives in exile in France, was accused of "attempted rape, sexual harassment and indecent assault by a superior". He was sentenced in absentia by the Tunis Court of First Instance to 10 years in prison and a fine of 5,000 dinars (3,675 euros) after being schemed against. Human rights associations denounced the intrigue.
On 17th September 2001, the LTDH secretary had filed a complaint against Mr. Ksila for "attempted rape by a superior". On 2nd September, the case was referred to the senior investigating magistrate. Shortly thereafter a journalist from Echourouk, a newspaper with close ties to the authorities, published several elements of the case, completely violating principles of presumption of innocence and confidentiality of investigation, and thus providing substance for a smear campaign against Mr. Ksila.
Harassment of CNLT and its members
Obstacles to freedom of assembly44
In 2002 the National Council for Freedoms in Tunisia (Conseil national pour les libertés en Tunisie – CNLT) was still not authorised to register officially and its freedom of assembly was often impeded.
On 8th September, for instance, the organisation was unable to hold a plenary meeting because of the large number of policemen blocking the entrance. The 82 year old Prof. Mohamed Talbi, member of the CNLT Liaison Committee, was roughed up and insulted.
20th December is the anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the day on which CNLT, each year, awards the H. Ayaru human rights prize; the ceremony was forbidden. A large number of policemen encircled the CNLT office where the award was to be made to Bochra Belhadj Hamida, a lawyer and former president of ATFD (Tunisian Association of Democratic Women). Oum Zied, a journalist and CNLT founding member was violently knocked about, and Mr. Ali Bensalem (74 years), a CNLT founding member got hit. Because of this situation, CNLT decided to postpone the ceremony until two days later and hold it in the home of Mr. Chakroun, former President of the Bar Association, CNLT founding member and President of the Jury. But his home was surrounded by policemen patrolling the neighbourhood.
Harassment of Mrs. Sihem Ben Sedrine and Mr. Omar Mestiri45
In April 2002, newspapers with close ties to the government, viz. Echourouk, Le Quotidien and El Hadeth, launched a defamation campaign against Mrs. Sihem Ben Sedrine, spokesperson of the CNLT and Mr. Omar Mestiri, former CNLT Secretary General. They were accused of being pro-Zionist and colluding with Israel. This campaign was subsequent to their participation in a conference in Geneva at which they spoke about the situation in Palestine and paid tribute to the Israeli pacifists.
Mrs. Ben Sedrine and Mr. Mestiri are closely followed by the Tunisian security forces. At the end of 2002, there were still close to a dozen policemen constantly watching Mrs. Ben Sedrine's home.
Last, the case against Mrs. Ben Sedrine in June 2001 is still pending. Mrs. Ben Sedrine was accused of "spreading false news liable to disturb the peace" and "offending the judiciary" after she appeared on the Arab station Al Mustaquilla, in London to speak about corruption and torture in Tunisia. When she deplaned in Tunis on 26th June 2001 she was put in jail for 47 days, and was only freed thanks to national and international pressure.
The complaint lodged in London against Mr. Mohamed el Hachmi Hamdi, Director of Al Mustaquilla, and Mr. Khémaïs Chammari, Tunisian human rights defender in exile, as part of this affair, was lodged again in early 2002. It was closed when one of the complainants, the Director of the daily newspaper Echourouk, died. Mr. Chammari is still being slandered by the media in the pay of the government, so is Mr. Kamel Jendoubi, President of the Committeee for the Respect of Human Rights and Freedoms in Tunisia (Comité pour le respect des libertés et des droits de l'Homme en Tunisie – CRLDHT) in exile and Mr. Mohamed Charfi, former LTDH President.
Harassment of Mr. Abderraouf Ayadi46
Mr. Abderraouf Ayadi, lawyer and CNLT Secretary General was sequestered on 20th August 2002 for four hours at the Ministry of the Interior. He had come with his client, who had been told to come and pick up her passport. When he was about to leave, the police threatened and forcibly detained him. He was questioned about his clients and asked to sign a letter promising not to organise any more meetings at his house; he refused.
His office is constantly being watched and his clients are subjected to pressure. In mid-December he was again harassed and roughed up.
Obstacle to the freedom of movement of Mr. Sadri Khiari47
On 25th October 2002, Mr. Sadri Khiari, CNLT founding member and member of RAID (Gathering for an International Alternative to Development, Tunisian Section of the international movement ATTAC) went on a hunger strike to protest withdrawal of his right to travel since July 2000. The Tunisian authorities prevented him from leaving the country several times on the pretext that legal proceedings have been lodged against him. He was never informed of them, which is contrary to the law. On 27th October 2002 six policemen went to his house. They first took Mr. Philippe Corcuff, an ATTAC-France member, who had come to provide some support, with them. Mr. Corcuff was expelled to France. A few hours later, the police forced Mr. Khiari to come with them. He was detained for five hours.
On 23rd November, when Mr. Khiari was to go to Paris to defend his thesis, he was prevented from leaving the country for the seventh time. A strong police brigade was at the airport to face the many activists who had come to support him. Afterwards, some thirty lawyers went to the office of the senior investigating magistrate of the Tunis Court of First Instance to find out what the reasons were. They were given file numbers for two cases concerning Mr. Khiari that dated back to March 2000 and involved contempt of the judiciary, contempt of public order and spreading false information.
Sentencing and detention of Mr. Zouhayr Yahyaoui48
Mr. Zouhair Yahyaoui, who created TUNeZINE, a website on fundamental freedoms in Tunisia, and, moreover, is the nephew of Judge Mokhtar Yahyaoui, was arrested in 4th June at his office. He was taken to his home where his bedroom was searched and his computer equipment was confiscated. The six plainclothes policemen who went into his home did not show him any document or give any explanation. After spending five days in an unidentified place, where he was tortured, he was transferred to the civil prison in Tunis.
On 20th June he was sentenced by the Tunis Court of First Instance to one year in prison for having "spread false information (Article 306bis §2 of the Penal Code), to one year and four months in prison for "unauthorised use of Internet connections" (Article 84 of the Communications Code) and "theft of harm to the employer" (Article 84 of the Penal Code). The Observatory sent a representative to attend the hearing.
On 11th July, the Tunis Court of Appeal sentenced him to two years in prison for "having communicated or revealed information that he knew was false in order to give the impression that an attack would occur" (Article 306ter of the Penal Code) and "removing telecommunications lines" (Article 84 of the Telecommunications Code). The prosecuting magistrate rejected the request to postpone the hearing and grant the detainee a temporary release. The case was deliberated without careful study, and without giving the defendant nor the defence an opportunity to be heard.
On 27th August, the Observatory informed the Special Representative of the UN Secretary General on Human Rights Defenders, the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, and the Special Rapporteur on Torture about the especially degrading conditions of detention. The Observatory had been told that Mr. Yahyaoui was kept in a 60m2 cell where there were 60 inmates. There was only one bed for every two people, and temperatures were about 40-50°C. Furthermore, Mr. Yahyaoui contracted an infectious disease and was not properly treated for it, furthermore the prison guards were repeatedly humiliating him.
The TUNeZINE site – which is censored in Tunisia – disseminates information on the basic freedoms in Tunisia. It has two open discussion forums. After Mr. Z. Yahyaoui was arrested, the site disappeared from the Internet, since the police probably obtained the right password. The site has been put back on line by other webmasters.
Obstacles to freedom of movement and acts of violence against Mr. Mokhtar Yahyaoui49
Judge Mokhtar Yahyaoui, President of the Tunisian Centre for the Independence of Justice (Centre tunisien pour l'indépendance de la justice – CTIJ), was disbarred by the Disciplinary Board of the Magistrature in December 2001 for having denounced the lack of independence of the Tunisian judiciary in an open letter to the President of the Republic. He was prevented from leaving the country to go to Geneva on 4th April 2002 to honour an invitation from the Observatory to attend a meeting of the UN Commission on Human Rights and meet the Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers. On orders of the Ministry of Justice, the airport police in Tunis prevented him from leaving.
Further, on 11th December 2002, Mr. Yahyaoui was assaulted on the way to his lawyer's office. A plainclothesman blocked the entrance to the building where Mr. Bhiri had his law office and forced Mr. Yahyaoui into a small street where two other people joined in and beat him over the head several times.
Mr. Yahyaoui was on his way to the law office of Mr. Noureddine Bhiri, with whom he was going to go to the airport to welcome Mr. Nejib Hosni, lawyer and CNLT member, because of the problems he had had in leaving. Mr. Hosni, who was still being harassed in 200250, was returning from Geneva where he spoke on the difficulties confronting the Tunisian Bar.
The assault was subsequent to an order Judge Yahyaoui received that he should go to his local police station on 29th November 2002. The Judge did not respond because the order showed no reason. The assault was also ensuing the appeal he launched on 10th December 2002, on the anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, on behalf of the International association for the support of political prisoners (AISPP) to get 23 political prisoners in Tunisia out of isolation.
On 14th December 2002, Mr. Yahyaoui was kidnapped by men in civilian dress, probably agents from the Ministry of the Interior. He was released a few hours later.
At the end of 2002, Mr. Yahyaoui is still under close surveillance (telephone cut off, his house and movements under surveillance, pressure on his family, etc.).
Acts of violence and intimidation against lawyers51
On 2nd February and 30th March 2002, during the trial of Hamma Hammami, president and founder of the PCOT (Tunisian Communist Workers Party) and his comrades, accused of maintaining an unauthorised association, acts of violence were perpetrated against the lawyers on the defence team who tried to intervene in favour of some 15 international observers who had been prevented from attending the hearing. Two policemen violently threw Mrs. Bochra Belhadj Hamida, on the ground and beat her. Mr. Omar Mestiri was badly beaten up. Mr. Jameldine Bida, lawyer and former Secretary General of the Bar Association was hit in the face while trying to help Mr. Mestiri. Mr. Safouane Ben M'Rad, also a lawyer, was also beaten up and Ms. Hayet El Jazar, a lawyer, was spat upon and humiliated with insults.
On 12th November 2002, Ms. Belhadj Hamida came up against a large police barrier when she wanted to enter the Razi psychiatric hospital to help a client, a young woman employee, who was called before the hospital's disciplinary board. The young woman had complained, in August, of sexual harassment by her boss and was, in turn, accused of defamation. The policemen insulted them, and threatened them, as well as the defenders who had come to support the young woman, among when Mrs. Azza Ghanmi, co-ordinator of ATFD, a centre that listens to and gives guidance to female victims of violence. Although Ms. Belhadj Hamida showed the police officers the proof that she represented the hospital employee, and despite oral approval from the Director of the hospital, the police refused to let her in and continued to insult her.
In the morning of 13th December 2002, the law office of Mr. Noureddine Bhiri and his wife, Saida Akremi, also a lawyer, as well as AISPP Secretary General, was surrounded by policemen. When they arrived, they roughed up Mr. Bhiri et Mrs. Akremi and one of their children, a 13 year old, who was slapped hard in the face. When Dr. Tahar Mestiri, a CNLT member, arrived to take care of Mrs. Akremi, who was wounded and who was probably targeted more than anyone else because she was a member of AISPP, he too was violently struck.
Seventeen lawyers went to the place to find out what happened, and they too were brutally received. The group included Mr. Abderraouf Ayadi, Mr. Mokhtar Trifi, Mr. Mohamed Jmour, Secretary General of the Bar Association, Mr. Nejib Ben Youssef, Mr. Amir Benameur, and Mr. Youssef Rezgui, President of the young lawyers' association, whose eardrum was perforated.
Mrs. Akremi was then taken away by the plainclothes police and questioned for several hours. She was held until the middle of the afternoon. Mr. Samir Dillou, AISPP founding member was arrested in his law office that same morning and questioned for several hours. While under arrest, he was struck so hard on the head that he fainted.
The law office of Mr. Bhiri and Mrs. Saida Akremi were ransacked during the night of 16 June 2002; money and documents were stolen.
Last, Mr. Bhiri, a CTIJ founding members and Mr. Mohamed Nouri, a founding member of the young lawyers' association and of CTIJ, and also AISPP President, were taken in for questioning when they reached their respective offices on 22 November. They were released a few hours later.
Legal proceedings against the Bar Association52
Six lawyers with close ties to the RCD engaged legal proceedings against the Bar Association for "obstructing freedom at work". These charges were a follow up to the 7th February 2002 call launched by the Bar Association to go on a hunger strike to protest against the irregularities and the violence connected to the trial of Mr. Hamma Hammami, the head of PCOT (Tunisian Communist Workers Party). The hearing was first set for 7th June 2002 and has been postponed several times. The Observatory sent a representative to the two last court sessions (19th November and 24th December), jointly with CIJ (International Commission of Jurists) and ASF, (Lawyers Without Borders). The next session is scheduled for 25th February 2003.
In the interim, early in December 2002, the Bar Association fell victim to a manoeuvre by the Ministry of Justice which, in a suspicious manner started talking to the regional sections of the Bar in an effort to isolate the national Bar and its president, Mr. Bechir Essid. The reaction of the lawyers put an end to the Ministry's tactic.
Harassment of Mrs. Radhia Nasraoui53
Mrs. Radhia Nasraoui, a lawyer, and her three daughters are still being systematically harassed (trailing, tapped telephone, intimidation, etc.). Example: on 13th August her daughter Nadia, 19, was assaulted by a policeman while she was waiting for a taxi in Bizerte. Her passport was confiscated but no explanation was given. It was only returned when a lawyer, a family friend, went to the police station.
On 26th June, Mrs. Nasraoui went on a hunger strike to get her husband, Mr. Hamma Hammami, released. She continued the strike until 2nd August, 37 days. Mr. Hammami was finally set free on 4th September 2002, for health reasons.
CIJ investigation mission forced to turn back54
On 28th October 2002, an inquiry mission of the International Commission of Jurists (CIJ) was turned back when it arrived at the airport in Tunis. The 5-person group was supposed to investigate harassment of lawyers and judges in Tunisia.
[Refworld note: This report as posted on the FIDH website (www.fidh.org) was in pdf format with country chapters run together by region. Footnote numbers have been retained here, so do not necessarily begin at 1.]
40. See Annual Report 2001 and Urgent Appeal TUN 004/0602/OBS 036.
41. See Annual Report 2001 and Urgent Appeal TUN 001/0202/OBS 009.
42. See Annual Report 2001.
43. See press release of 8 February 2002.
44. See Annual Report 2001.
45. Idem.
46. Idem.
47. See Urgent Appeal TUN 005/1002/OBS 063.
48. See Urgent Appeal TUN 004/0602/OBS 036 and press releases of 20 June and 11 July 2002.
49. See press releases of 4 April and 14 December 2002, Mission report: L'affaire Yahyaoui, le combat d'un homme pour l'indépendance de la justice, May 2002, and Urgent Appeal TUN 005/0107/OBS 063.02.
50. See Annual Report 2001.
51. See Urgent Appeals TUN 002/0402/OBS 025 and TUN 006/1202/OBS 071.
52. See. Judicial Observation Missions of 19 November and 24 December 2002.
53. See Annual Report 2001.
54. See Urgent Appeal TUN 005/1002/OBS 063.
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