By sentencing the former president of the Truth and Dignity Commission to 25 years in prison for acts committed while carrying out her legal duties, Kaïs Saïed’s regime has taken another step forward in its counterrevolution and its campaign to dismantle the achievements of the Tunisian revolution.

The Committee for the Respect of Human Rights and Freedoms in Tunisia (CRLDHT) condemns in the strongest possible terms the ruling handed down on the night of June 25–26, 2026, by the Criminal Chamber specializing in financial corruption cases of the Economic and Financial Judicial Division of the Tunis Court of First Instance.

Under this ruling, Ms. Sihem Ben Sedrine, former president of the Truth and Dignity Commission (IVD), has been sentenced to twenty-five years in prison in two cases directly related to the duties entrusted to her by law as head of the institution responsible for implementing transitional justice.

At the age of 75, after having already endured more than six months of arbitrary detention, a prolonged hunger strike that severely compromised her health, and hospitalization on a ventilator, Ms. Ben Sedrine has been sentenced to a term that, given her age and physical condition, effectively amounts to a sentence to spend the rest of her life in prison.

This decision marks a turning point of exceptional gravity. It criminalizes the exercise of a legal mandate entrusted by the legislature to an institution created to shed light on past violations, deliver justice to victims, and combat impunity. Through Sihem Ben Sedrine, the entire transitional justice process now finds itself in the dock.

A judgment of extreme brutality

The first case concerns the arbitration and reconciliation agreement entered into between the Truth and Dignity Commission and businessman Slim Chiboub, under the mechanism provided for by the Organic Law on Transitional Justice.

The court sentenced:

• Sihem Ben Sedrine was sentenced to five years in prison;
• Khaled Krichi, former president of the IVD’s Arbitration and Reconciliation Commission, was sentenced to five years in prison;
• Mabrouk Korchid, former Minister of State Property, sentenced to six years in prison;
• Slim Chiboub was sentenced to five years in prison for aiding and abetting.

The defendants were also each fined 1,776,170,000 dinars (more than 525 million euros) and ordered to pay the same amount jointly and severally.

The second case concerns the Banque Franco-Tunisienne (BFT) case.

The court sentenced the following:

• Sihem Ben Sedrine was sentenced to five years in prison;
• Khaled Krichi was sentenced to five years in prison;
• Mabrouk Korchid sentenced to six years in prison;
• Abdelmajid Bouden was sentenced to six years in prison.

The four convicted individuals must also pay a fine of 16,985,003.774 dinars (more than 5 million euros) each and jointly and severally reimburse that same amount.

Finally, the court sentenced Sihem Ben Sedrine to an additional fifteen years for forgery, possession of forged documents, and use of forged documents, bringing her total sentence to twenty-five years in prison.

The exceptional severity of these sentences stands in contrast to the nature of the alleged offenses, which are exclusively related to the exercise of public duties within the framework of an institution established by law.

The Trial of Transitional Justice

The legal proceedings relate exclusively to decisions made in the exercise of the Truth and Dignity Commission’s legal mandate.

The arbitration and reconciliation processes are neither personal initiatives of Ms. Ben Sedrine nor actions lacking a legal basis. They constitute a mechanism expressly established by Organic Law No. 2013-53 of December 24, 2013, on the establishment and organization of transitional justice, Chapter IX (Articles 45 through 50) of which entrusts the IVD with the task of conducting arbitration and reconciliation proceedings in cases of financial corruption.

The decisions that are now being treated as criminal offenses were made collectively by the Authority’s competent bodies, in accordance with the powers defined in Articles 39 through 50 of that same law. They cannot be equated with personal acts of its president.

By bringing criminal charges against IVD officials for enforcing a law passed by a democratically elected assembly, the government is not merely challenging certain administrative decisions. It is criminalizing the exercise of a legal mandate and seeking to delegitimize the entire transitional justice process.

A Methodical Counterrevolution

Since July 25, 2021, Kaïs Saïed has claimed that he wants to “correct the course of the revolution.” The facts show exactly the opposite.

For the past five years, we have been witnessing a systematic effort to dismantle all the gains of the 2011 revolution: the 2014 Constitution, independent institutions, the High Council of the Judiciary, freedom of the press, political pluralism, the autonomy of civil society, and the independence of the judiciary.

Transitional justice has become one of the main targets of this counterrevolution.

The Committee for Martyrs and Wounded of the Revolution has been dissolved.

The El Karama Fund, established by Government Decree No. 2018-211 to finance reparations for victims, was abolished and replaced by the Fidaa Foundation, established by Decree-Law No. 2022-20, which is gradually replacing a victim-centered approach with one focused primarily on the armed forces and security forces.

The specialized criminal chambers, established pursuant to Organic Law No. 2013-53 and organized by Government Decree No. 2014-2887 of August 8, 2014, have been gradually stripped of their substance. Due to a lack of specialized judges, they are now effectively defunct, and hundreds of cases involving serious human rights violations remain unresolved.

The final report of the Truth and Dignity Commission, submitted in December 2018 and officially published in the Official Journal of the Tunisian Republic (JORT No. 46 of June 9, 2020), continues to be ignored, even though its implementation is a legal obligation.

This trial marks a new stage in the counterrevolution led by Kaïs Saïed—a counterrevolution that no longer seeks merely to govern differently, but to erase even the memory of the revolution and the mechanisms designed to prevent the return of dictatorship.

A campaign of judicial harassment

Today's conviction is part of a campaign of judicial harassment that has been waged against Sihem Ben Sedrine for several years.

Arrested in August 2024, detained for more than six months despite her age and health condition, and forced to undertake a prolonged hunger strike that required her admission to intensive care, she was only released thanks to a massive national and international outcry.

The charges against her are based primarily on Article 96 of the Tunisian Penal Code, a provision designed to punish abuses of office committed by a public official that cause harm to the government in order to obtain an undue advantage.

Intended as a tool to combat corruption, this article is now widely criticized by judges, academics, and human rights organizations because of its particularly broad interpretation. It now makes it possible to classify administrative decisions or legal judgments made in the normal course of public service as criminal offenses.

The additional fifteen years imposed on Ms. Ben Sedrine are based on the offenses of forgery, possession of forged documents, and use of forged documents, which were found to constitute concurrent offenses under Article 55 of the Penal Code, bringing the total sentence to twenty-five years’ imprisonment.

A judiciary that takes orders and flouts Tunisia's international commitments

These convictions come amid a profound erosion of the judiciary’s independence.

Since the dissolution of the High Council of the Judiciary by Decree-Law No. 2022-11 of February 12, 2022, followed by the adoption of Decree-Law No. 2022-35 of June 1, 2022, authorizing the removal of judges by simple presidential decree without effective disciplinary safeguards, the conditions under which justice is administered in Tunisia have been profoundly altered.

In such a context, it is reasonable to question whether the courts are capable of ruling independently in cases involving such obvious political implications.

On the eve of the trial, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the promotion of truth, justice, reparation, and guarantees of non-recurrence, Bernard Duhaime, had publicly condemned these prosecutions, arguing that they reflected a political will to use the judicial system to bring an end to the transitional justice process.

This decision appears to be inconsistent with the international commitments that Tunisia has freely undertaken.

It raises serious questions with regard to Article 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which guarantees the right to a fair trial before an independent and impartial tribunal, as well as Article 7 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights.

It also violates the United Nations Basic Principles on the Independence of the Judiciary and international standards governing transitional justice processes.

The CRLDHT :

• condemns in the strongest possible terms this manipulation of the justice system to serve a political agenda aimed at dismantling transitional justice;
• expresses its full solidarity with Sihem Ben Sedrine, Attorney Khaled Krichi, Attorney Korchid Maboruk, and all those being prosecuted for their involvement in the implementation of transitional justice;
• recalls that transitional justice remains a legal obligation of the Tunisian State and that no political change can nullify the victims’ rights to truth, justice, reparations, and guarantees of non-repetition;
• calls on the Tunisian authorities to end the criminalization of transitional justice actors and to respect their constitutional and international commitments;
• calls on the United Nations, the European Union, the African Union, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, and all of Tunisia’s partners to unequivocally condemn this latest step toward authoritarianism and to demand respect for the rule of law.

Paris, June 26, 2026