A Tunisian man who had been sentenced to death over Facebook posts deemed offensive to President Kais Saied has been pardoned and released from prison, his lawyer and a human rights group say.
Saber Ben Chouchane left jail overnight and was at home with his family, his lawyer Oussama Bouthelja told news agencies on Tuesday, after a wave of criticism from human rights groups over the case.
Saber’s brother, Jamal Chouchane, also confirmed to the Reuters news agency that he had been freed while the rights group Amnesty International said in a statement that he had been released due to “a presidential pardon”.
Ben Chouchane, who was arrested in January 2024, had been sentenced to death by a court in Nabeul, east of Tunis, on Wednesday, Bouthelja told the AFP news agency.
His client had been found guilty of “insulting the president, the minister of justice and the judiciary”, spreading false news and some of his social media posts were also deemed to be incitement, Bouthelja added.
Bouthelja told AFP that he had filed an appeal against his sentence on Friday but was later informed Ben Chouchane withdrew it, allowing a presidential pardon to be granted.
‘A serious precedent’
Bouthelja said he had been “astonished” by the death sentence, which rights groups said represented a chilling new level of repression amid tightening restrictions on speech since Saied mounted a sweeping power grab in 2021.
Heba Morayef, regional director at Amnesty International, had described the verdict “as a significant escalation and an outrageous assault on human rights”.
“The use of capital punishment in this case is a stark and horrifying illustration of a government weaponizing the justice system to crush freedom of expression and the slightest sign of dissent,” she said in a statement on Monday.
The Paris-based Tunisian human rights group CRLDHT had said the verdict set “a serious precedent” and Tunisia had “reached unprecedented levels of human rights violations”.
Rule by presidential decree
Saied, who was elected in 2019, dissolved Tunisia’s elected parliament in 2021 and started ruling by decree, leading to what rights groups said has been a major rollback of freedoms and sparking concerns over the erosion of judicial independence.
In particular, a law criminalising “spreading false news”, enacted by Saied in September 2022, has been criticised by rights groups for stifling free speech.
Dozens of Saied’s critics have been prosecuted under the decree and are currently behind bars, according to AFP.
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