May 3, 2024

The Committee for the Respect of Freedoms and Human Rights in Tunisia expresses its full solidarity with Zied Ghanney, deputy secretary general of the Le Courant démocratique party and former deputy for the Paris constituency in the Parliament elected in 2019. The Committee considers the travel ban and the inability to join his family in France, where he had been living and working until now, as a new episode of persecution committed by the judiciary against the democratic opposition and any opinion critical of the political power and opposed to the current autocratic regime.

As a reminder, Zied Ghanney was arrested on July 9, 2023, as he was preparing to return to France after a vacation in Tunisia, by a court order preventing him from joining his work and family in France, on the grounds of his participation in a virtual parliamentary session held by the deputies of the parliament dissolved on March 23, 2022.

The arbitrariness of the judicial decision is all the more flagrant given that Zied Ghanney had not received any summons from the judicial authorities, had not been questioned, nor had he received any return of the appeal he had lodged despite the fact that the legal deadline had passed.

The Comité pour le Respect des Libertés et des Droits Humains en Tunisie renews its support for Zied Ghanney and all those who are banned from traveling because of their opinions and political positions, and considers that such unjust decisions, which have prevented him from rejoining his wife and two young children and caused him to lose his permanent job in France, show how Tunisian justice has become a systematic tool for violating human rights and fundamental freedoms.

Consequently, the Committee calls on the community of judges to carry out their work in complete neutrality, to preserve their independence and to apply the law instead of making the justice system an instrument at the service of the regime to silence all opposition and criticism of it.