Tunisian commentator sentenced to two years under controversial anti-fake news law

TUNIS, Tunisia — A well-known Tunisian attorney and commentator was sentenced to two years in prison over remarks she made about the North African country and its treatment of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa.

Sonia Dahmani was found guilty on Thursday of violating a statute against fake news that critics have long argued Tunisian authorities use to stifle criticism of President Kais Saied. Saied, a populist, has aggressively pursued his opponents since taking office, often casting them as foreign agents or accusing them of undermining state security.

The cybercrime statute, known as Decree-Law 54, makes it illegal “to produce, spread, disseminate, send or write false news ... with the aim of infringing the rights of others, harming public safety or national defense or sowing terror among the population.”

Since its passage in 2022, journalists and human rights groups have said Decree-Law 54 is among the ways that authorities have curbed freedom of expression in Tunisia under Saied.

Dozens of opposition figures, journalists and political commentators have been charged after criticizing the government, including Dahmani, who is being prosecuted in several cases for remarks she made earlier this year, her attorney Sami Ben Ghazi told The Associated Press.

In May, she sarcastically criticized Tunisia on a private radio station, calling attention to the economic conditions and the racism afflicting Black migrants living in the country.

“What a magnificent country you speak of,” she said on the radio during a discussion about migrants that followed clashes between them and Tunisians.

Masked plainclothes officers subsequently raided the headquarters of Tunisia’s bar association to arrest her.

Ben Ghazi called Thursday's sentence unjust and “part of the pattern of harassment practiced by the authorities against free voices" while Dahmani's defense committee said she was a “victim of injustice and various judicial abuses.”

Arrests ramped up in the months before Tunisia's Oct. 6 presidential election, which Saied won with 90.7% of the vote. Government critics including Dahmani, her fellow Radio IFM commentators Mourad Zeghidi and Borhane Bsaïs, and journalist and commentator Mohammed Boughalleb were all sentenced on charges that included violating Decree-Law 54.

Zeghidi and Bsais in May were sentenced to one year in prison for violating the statute. Boughalleb was sentenced to six months in prison in April.

“Under such a decree, no critic of the authorities can feel safe,” Human Rights Watch said in a report last December in which it documented 22 court cases against government critics.

Tunisia is among the countries in which populist politicians have in recent years pushed for legislation targeting the dissemination of so-called fake news. From Egypt to Uganda, press freedom advocates have said that leaders have exploited newfound concerns about misinformation to pass new laws that stifle legitimate criticism of the government.

The National Syndicate of Tunisian Journalists in a statement expressed its "firm condemnation of the ongoing policy of blackout and restrictions on journalistic work” put in place by authorities.

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Metz reported from Rabat, Morocco.