A Tunisian court on Wednesday ordered two journalists to be held in remand until the completion of investigations into critical comments, a court spokesman said.
\nBroadcaster Borhen Bssais and political commentator Mourad Zeghidi were arrested Saturday under a decree criminalizing \u201cspreading false information\u201d among other charges, spokesman Mohamed Zitouna said.
\nZeghidi is being investigated over social media statements last February and a post in support of Mohamed Boughalleb, another journalist and critic of President Kais Saied who has been detained separately.
\nBssais was arrested on accusations of \u201chaving harmed President Kais Saied through radio broadcasts and statements\u201d online between 2019 and 2022, according to his lawyer Nizar Ayed.
\nTheir trial is set to begin on May 22, according to their lawyers.
\nBoth media figures are prosecuted under a law ratified by Saied in September 2022.
\nJournalists and opposition figures have said it has been used to stifle dissent.
\nSince the decree came into force, more than 60 journalists, lawyers and opposition figures have been prosecuted under it, according to the National Union of Tunisian Journalists.
\nThe same night Bssais and Zeghidi were taken into police custody, masked police raided the Tunisian bar association and arrested lawyer Sonia Dahmani, also the same law.
\nOn Monday, another lawyer was forcibly arrested at the association\u2019s headquarters.
\nThe president of the bar, Hatem Meziou, on Tuesday called for an end to \u201cthe abuse of power\u201d and \u201cviolence\u201d targeting the lawyers.
\nThe European Union also expressed concern over a string of arrests of civil society figures in Tunisia — the latest sign of a tightening clampdown on freedoms under Saied.
\nNon-governmental organizations have decried a rollback of freedoms in Tunisia since Saied began ruling by decree after a sweeping power grab in 2021.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Tunisian court on Wednesday ordered two journalists to be held in remand until the completion of investigations into critical comments, a court spokesman said. Broadcaster Borhen Bssais and political commentator Mourad Zeghidi were arrested Saturday under a decree criminalizing \u201cspreading false information\u201d among other charges, spokesman Mohamed Zitouna said. Zeghidi is being investigated over …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":21958,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21953"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21953\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21959,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21953\/revisions\/21959"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}