Tunisian court hands presidential critic Sonia Dahmani new jail term

Lawyer convicted for the second time this year as President Saied’s crackdown on dissent intensifies.

Tunisian lawyer and columnist Sonia Dahmani has been sentenced to two years in jail for criticising prison conditions, according to her lawyer.

The Tunis Court of First Instance handed down the verdict after a hearing on Friday, lawyer Sami Ben Ghazi told the AFP news agency. It is the latest in a string of convictions against one of President Kais Saied’s most prominent critics.

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The case followed a complaint by the General Administration of Prisons over a 2023 radio interview in which Dahmani criticised prison conditions. Dahmani’s lawyer said he has lodged an appeal.

The 60-year-old Dahmani is facing prosecution in five separate cases, all linked to media statements and based on Decree 54, a “false information” law passed by Saied in 2022 that human rights groups have condemned as a tool of political repression.

The guilty verdict regarding her criticism of the prison system is not her first. She was sentenced to 18 months for a sarcastic remark on television in May 2024, questioning why migrants would want to settle in Tunisia amid a severe economic crisis.

In April, an appeal court handed her a further 18 months for criticising cemeteries and buses reserved for Black people in parts of the country.

Dahmani was arrested in May 2024 at the headquarters of the Bar Association by masked police officers, in what her colleagues described as “a brutal and illegal operation.”

She was released on conditional parole last November after more than 18 months in detention.

Human rights organisations have raised alarm over what they describe as a sharp increase in repression since Saied seized power in a coup in July 2021. Lawyers, journalists and activists have increasingly been targeted under Decree 54 or on anti-terrorism charges.

The crackdown has coincided with a hostile climate towards sub-Saharan migrants, following Saied’s 2023 remarks accusing them of seeking to alter Tunisia’s demographic makeup, which triggered a wave of violence.