Critic of Tunisia president gets new jail term: lawyer

TUNIS: A Tunisian court sentenced lawyer and media figure Sonia Dahmani to two years in prison on Thursday over comments she made criticizing racism in the country, her legal representative said.
Dahmani, 56, was arrested on May 11 after having already been sentenced to eight months in prison in another case.
Her arrest came when masked police raided Tunisia’s bar association, where she had sought refuge, following public remarks on television the authorities deemed critical in the initial case.
Thursday’s sentence was issued after she claimed in another statement that sub-Saharan Africans in Tunisia, including black Tunisians, faced racism, her lawyer Chawki Tabib told AFP.
She did not provide any details on the statements that landed her the sentence.
Dahmani still faces three other cases, one of her lawyers, Pierre-Francois Feltesse, told AFP.
In September, she was sentenced to eight months in prison over comments — also regarding migration in Tunisia — she made on television.
In a talk show, she had sarcastically questioned Tunisia’s state of affairs in response to claims that sub-Saharan migrants were settling in the country.
“What extraordinary country are we talking about?” she said at the time.
A judicial report later said her comments referenced a speech by President Kais Saied, who said Tunisia would not become a resettlement zone for migrants blocked from going to Europe.
Saied, democratically elected in 2019, has ruled Tunisia by decree since a 2021 power grab. He was re-elected this month by a landslide with 90 percent of the vote.
In both cases, Dahmani was sentenced under Decree 54, a law enacted by Saied in 2022 that criminalizes “spreading false news.”
The National Union of Tunisian Journalists says it has been used to prosecute tens of journalists, lawyers and opposition figures.