Following the tragic death of the late Ali Ghedamsi, a businessman from Sousse, on March 30, 2025 in the Messaâdine civil prison where he was being held, the CRLDHT expresses its deep dismay at the suspicious and indecent silence of the prison authorities and the Ministry of Justice, the supervisory authority.

Incarcerated in connection with the "Instalingo" case and charged in other judicial files, Ali Ghedamsi was prosecuted in case no. 04/2023, opened on October 28, 2023, alongside Lazhar Loungou, former Director General of Specialized Services at the Ministry of the Interior, and the brother of former deputy Lotfi Ali. All were charged with forming a criminal conspiracy, fraud and money laundering. On March 18, 2025, the 10th Indictment Chamber of the Tunis Court of Appeal rejected his request for provisional release, despite his deteriorating health.

The CRLDHT :

• Expresses its deepest condolences to the family of the deceased and offers them its unconditional support in their quest for truth and justice, including recourse to national and international courts.
• Strongly condemns the systematic neglect of detainees' rights that characterizes Tunisian prison services today. Detention conditions have deteriorated sharply against a backdrop of repression and the progressive dismantling of fundamental guarantees.
• Denounces the inhumane behavior of prison and judicial authorities with regard to prisoners' health conditions. According to his family's statements, Ali Ghedamsi was suffering from cancer and did not receive the medical care and treatment essential to his condition. In the eyes of the CRLDHT, this deprivation was a direct cause of his death.
• Alerts national and international public opinion to the non-isolated nature of this tragedy. Many detainees, whether political, of opinion or common law, are illegally deprived of medical care, in violation of the Constitution, articles 6 and 10 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and article 17 of organic law n°52/2001 on the organization of prisons.
• Deplores the attitude of examining magistrates and indictment and trial chambers, who, under the influence of the executive, systematically refuse requests for provisional release, even when detainees present a high degree of health fragility and pose no danger to society, thus transforming provisional detention into an extrajudicial sanction.
• Holds the Tunisian authorities responsible for the serious deterioration in the state of health of detainees, the political recourse to arbitrary detention and the obstinacy in depriving defendants of their right to a fair trial. The CRLDHT demands that full light be shed on the exact causes of Ali Ghedamsi's death, and that those truly responsible be prosecuted.
• Recalls that the African Court of Human and Peoples' Rights had already noted these serious shortcomings and ordered the Tunisian State, in case no. 04/2023 dated October 28, 2023, to guarantee detainees the right to communicate with their doctors.
• Calls for an urgent mobilization of national and international human rights organizations to protect the most vulnerable detainees whose health is seriously threatened, and who are the object of a political-security relentlessness likely to increase the toll of victims of this policy of negligence and repression.