The Comité pour le Respect des Libertés et des Droits de l'Homme en Tunisie (CRLDHT) expresses its strongest condemnation of the decision handed down on Thursday June 12, 2025 by the Tunis Court of First Instance, which sentenced lawyer and political opponent Abir Moussi to two years in prison. The sentence, publicly confirmed by her lawyer Nafaa Laribi, is based on a complaint lodged by the Instance Supérieure Indépendante pour les Élections (ISIE), following critical remarks made by Ms. Moussi against the electoral institution, in the context of the 2022 legislative elections.
The conviction is based on Article 24 of Decree-Law 54 on cybercrime, a text unilaterally adopted by Kaïs Saïed in September 2022, which penalizes the "dissemination of false information" undermining public security or public order. Since its promulgation, this decree-law has been systematically used to prosecute and imprison journalists, lawyers, human rights activists, trade union or political figures, and anyone publicly expressing disagreement with the government line. This text, which criminalizes political opinion and public criticism, has been widely denounced by Tunisian and international human rights organizations for its vagueness, disproportionate scope and incompatibility with fundamental standards of freedom of expression.
This court decision comes as Ms. Moussi has already been detained since October 3, 2023, when she was arrested by Tunisian police near the Carthage presidential palace. At the time, she was attempting to lodge an administrative appeal challenging a presidential decree. This arrest, which took place in particularly opaque conditions, ushered in a prolonged period of detention, marked by serious procedural irregularities, arbitrary restrictions and deliberately organized isolation.
Since her incarceration, Ms. Moussi has been successively transferred between different prisons: from the Manouba prison to the Nabeul prison, then to the Bulla Regia prison in the Jendouba governorate, more than 150 kilometers from Tunis. These transfers were not accompanied by any official justification and had the direct effect of distancing him from his family, his lawyers and any possibility of effective defence. The conditions of detention denounced by his family and defense team are alarming: temporary deprivation of food and medication, strict and arbitrary restrictions on family and legal visits, application of regulations that do not comply with Tunisian law, and prolonged isolation. Several warnings have been issued about her physical and mental health, all the more worrying as Abir Moussi has observed hunger strikes on several occasions in protest against her conditions of detention.
The CRLDHT denounces a clear political and judicial harassment aimed at neutralizing one of the opposition figures in a context of accelerated regression of public freedoms in Tunisia. This conviction comes in a climate of political asphyxia, where criticism of the regime is systematically criminalized. The ISIE, a theoretically independent institution, has become one of the instruments of this strategy of repression, by prosecuting political players challenging the legitimacy of the electoral process, which was nonetheless massively boycotted in 2022 and marked by a historic abstention rate.
This ruling is part of a wider dynamic, in which Tunisian criminal law is being hijacked from its original vocation to become a tool of political control. By punishing a political statement made in a public forum, the judiciary is seriously undermining the very foundations of freedom of expression, democratic pluralism and the right to criticize institutions. The fact that Ms Moussi, a lawyer and elected member of parliament, has been sentenced for expressing reservations about the organization of an election, despite the fact that the Constitution guarantees the right to political participation and free criticism, is a flagrant violation of the fundamental principles of the rule of law.
The CRLDHT recalls that Tunisia is a signatory to numerous international human rights instruments, notably the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which guarantees the right to a fair trial, freedom of opinion, freedom of expression, freedom of association and protection against arbitrary detention. The prolonged detention of Ms. Moussi, the multiplication of proceedings against her, the violations of her procedural rights and the serious restrictions on her conditions of detention all constitute violations of these international commitments.
Faced with this situation, the CRLDHT demands the immediate annulment of the conviction handed down against Abir Moussi on June 12, 2025, and the cessation of all proceedings aimed at silencing her. We also demand the immediate release of Ms. Moussi, the guarantee of her fundamental rights in detention, free access to her lawyers and family, and full transparency regarding her state of health.
The CRLDHT calls for the repeal of Decree-Law 54, which has become a central instrument of political repression, and for the restoration of the constitutional guarantees of the rule of law. We also call on civil society organizations, international bodies, trade unions, lawyers and democratic movements to mobilize to denounce this authoritarian drift, demand an end to arbitrary detentions, and defend the civil and political rights of all Tunisian citizens.
To fail to react to this political relentlessness is to allow repression to become entrenched, and to ratify the erasure of fundamental freedoms won over decades of struggle.
