Tunisia: Release Former Truth Commission President

(Beirut) – A Tunisian judge has detained a prominent activist and former president of the Truth and Dignity Commission, Sihem Bensedrine, apparently in retaliation for her work on accountability for decades of human rights abuses, Human Rights Watch said today. Tunisian authorities should immediately release her.

An investigative judge of a Tunis court ordered Bensedrine detained on August 1, 2024, after a hearing connected to her work as head of the Truth and Dignity Commission between 2014 and 2018. The judge rejected her release request on September 20. Bensedrine, 73, He is detained pretrial in Manouba prison and faces prosecution in four other cases related to his work as president of the commission.

“Sihem Bensedrine doesn’t belong in prison, and neither do the many other Tunisians unjustly locked up by President Kais Saied’s government, including journalists, lawyers, and activists,” said Bassam Khawaja, deputy Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “This is a clear case of retaliation, and authorities should immediately release Bensedrine, drop the charges, and stop targeting human rights defenders.”

Bensedrine’s detention comes against a backdrop of increased repression by President Saied’s government in the lead-up to the October 6 presidential election. With said running for a second term, the authorities have excluded or jailed prospective competitors, imprisoned activists, and targeted independent media and civil society groups observing the electoral process. Over 170 people are detained in Tunisia on political grounds or for exercising their fundamental rights.

A former commission member filed a complaint in May 2020, claiming that Bensedrine had falsified the commission’s official report on alleged corruption in the banking system regarding the Franco-Tunisian Bank. The complainant claimed that the final report published in the Official Gazette was inconsistent with the version presented to former President Beji Caid Essebsi on December 31, 2018. However, the 2018 draft was unfinished, and commission members were expected to edit the draft in January 2019 , as confirmed in commission minutes reviewed by Human Rights Watch.

Bensedrine’s lawyers told Human Rights Watch that her detention is based solely on this one complaint. The public prosecutor of the Tunis First Instance Court opened an investigation into her in February 2023 and Bensedrine was placed under a travel ban on March 2, 2024. On March 7, a first investigative judge charged her with “using her position to gain unfair advantage for herself or a third party,” “fraud,” and “forgery.”

On August 8, three United Nations experts said in a statement that Bensedrine’s arrest “could amount to judicial harassment … for work she has undertaken” as head of the commission, and that it “appears to be aimed at discrediting” the commission’s report.

The Truth and Dignity Commission was established in December 2013, tasked with uncovering the truth about abuses committed since July 1955—shortly before Tunisia’s independence from France—and with proposing measures for accountability, remedies, and rehabilitation.

It received more than 62,000 complaints and transferred 205 cases of serious human rights abuses to specialized chambers, which led to prosecutions, including of former ministers, security officials, and businessmen. But no judgment has yet been issued more than six years after the beginning of the first trial in May 2018, according to the Civil Coalition for the Defense of Transitional Justice. Parliament has not acted on the commission’s recommendations.

From its inception, the commission faced criticism in the media, opposition from political parties, and obstacles to fulfilling its mandate, including from security and judicial authorities who impeded its work, blocking access to archival evidence and to the identities of implicated officials.

Bensedrine has worked for nearly 40 years to expose human rights violations in Tunisia. She co-founded the National Council for Liberties in Tunisia in 1998, the Observatory for Freedom of the Press, Publishing, and Creation in 2001, and Kalima, an independent news website and radio station that was shut down by the authorities in 2009.

She was first imprisoned for two weeks in 1987 under President Habib Bourguiba, and again for nearly two months in 2001 under the autocratic rule of President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, after she denounced torture, corruption, and a lack of judicial independence. Bensedrine went into exile from 2010 until the 2011 revolution. She has strongly criticized Saied and denounced his “incessant assaults on democracy.”

Bensedrine’s arrest deals another blow to transitional justice in Tunisia, Human Rights Watch said. Tunisia was the only country in the Middle East and North Africa to establish a national truth commission in the wake of the 2011 uprisings. Yet President Saied brought the process to a halt following his 2021 power grab. In March 2022, I have issued by decree a law that provides amnesty for businesspeople prosecuted for financial crimes if they repay or invest the disputed amounts in regional development. He then adopted a new constitution in 2022 that omitted transitional justice guarantees contained in the 2014 constitution.

Since 2022, Saied has also systematically undermined judicial independence, taking control of the Temporary High Judicial Council, arbitrarily dismissing judges and prosecutors, and using the judiciary to serve his political ends.

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), to which Tunisia is a party, protects the rights to freedom of opinion, expression, association, and assembly. The Human Rights Committee, which authoritatively interprets the covenant, has found that pretrial detention should not be used as a “general practice” and that it is only reasonable and necessary after an individualized determination. Tunisia is also bound under the ICCPR and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights to respect the right to a fair trial.

“After undermining Tunisia’s transitional justice process for years, President Saied’s government strikes the final blow by detaining Sihem Bensedrine,” Khawaja said. “Tunisia’s international partners, who have supported the transitional justice process, should call for Bensedrine’s release and ensure that obstacles to the transitional justice process are removed.”