Since his coup d'état and the declaration an application let's say of Article 80 of the 2014 constitution Kais Said has announced the color, he will take charge of the Public Prosecutor's Office.
Although he has retracted and renounced this blunder, which is diametrically opposed to the principles of the rule of law, it's as good as done.
Assured of the allegiance of most of the security apparatus, and bringing the judiciary to heel, President Said has not contented himself with directing the Public Prosecutor's Office, but has taken control of the entire judicial process, converting it into a tool of repression against dissidents, opponents, the conspiracists he sees everywhere, and all those who dare to enjoy their human rights, notably the right to contribute to the direction of their country's affairs, or the right to free expression.
Prison for all
Prison under Kais Said's reign is an obligatory place for all those designated as enemies of the people, or those whose incarceration corroborates the presidential elucubrations revolving around plotting against state security and corruption.
Unlike his predecessors in the dictatorship, Kais Said does not persecute each opposing political movement when it has finished with another, as detailed in the report of the Truth and Dignity Commission, but he persecutes everyone in the world, producing improbable scenarios in which figures from all sides of the political spectrum plot against Kais Said, including senior politicians appointed by Kais Said himself, such as Nadia Akecha, or security officers and businessmen. According to the authorities, some of them were plotting against Kais Said even before 2019. Chronological logic should not stand in the way of instructions.
But prison isn't just for plotting, it's also for daring to enjoy the right to free expression and opinion. The sinister decree-law 54/2021, in particular article 24, has formed the basis for the imprisonment of anyone who displeases the authorities, such as Sonia Dahmani, Abir Moussi , and hundreds of other citizens have been sentenced to deprivation of liberty, including journalists like Mohamed Boughaleb , Mourad and Bourhen Bsayess and others who are not a priori subject to this decree-law, as well as lawyers like Ayechi Hammemi , Ghazi Chaouachi , Dalila Msadak Mbarek and artists, young activists and ordinary citizens. The case of a certain Saber Chouchen, sentenced to capital punishment for Facebook statuses, then pardoned in such an unprecedented and illegal manner, speaks volumes about the way in which justice is managed or rather instrumentalized, which means that the deprivation of freedom is a formality, a daily banality.
On several occasions, the independent experts of the UN Human Rights Council have published communications warning and condemning this liberticidal strategy of the powers that be. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has also called on the Tunisian authorities on more than one occasion to respect the principles of freedom and fair trial.
Prison: the first criminal prosecution procedure
As soon as a person targeted by the regime is arrested, the detention order has become almost an inevitability, discerned by an examining magistrate or a court of law. Neither formal procedural failings nor the lack, or in most cases the absence, of factual elements of a nature to justify the prosecution, let alone the absence of danger to the detainee or society in the event of provisional release, can be invoked against the prosecution.
The instrumentalization of anti-terrorism legislation exacerbates the violations suffered by the individuals concerned, as it is more rigorous and offers fewer guarantees to detainees and greater comfort to the authorities.
The presumption of innocence is a distant memory following the resolution of the elected Superior Council of the Judiciary and the establishment of a provisional judiciary that shares its prerogatives with the executive under Presidential Decree-Law 11/2022, amended by Decree-Law 35/2022, which makes Tunisia the only country in the world where a President of the Republic can dismiss a magistrate without any prior procedure or stated reason. The dismissed magistrates will not be reinstated, even if the administrative court has ordered a stay of execution for some of them. Brought before the criminal courts, these magistrates will serve as examples for their colleagues still in office, at the mercy of memos from the Minister of Justice, taking advantage of the provisional council's freeze for lack of a quorum.
Kais Said has publicly hammered it home: "whoever dares to clear them is their accomplice". Justice has been reduced to a sort of formalities, an after-sales service for the Ministry of the Interior.
Kais Said's dwindling number of supporters were saying about the arrests on social networks "if he (she) hasn't done anything, he (she) will go home", as if guilt were the principle and freedom the exception.
Prison as a down payment on a sentence
As the principles of criminal law are reversed, criminal prosecutions are the logical continuation of the presidential narrative based on anthologies for conspiracy and corruption of enemies of the homeland. Detention and imprisonment is not a preventive measure for the protection of society, the individual concerned, his victims, the evidence or the instructions.
The decision to take public action against dissenters is akin to a lettre de cachet - the letter the King of France sent to imprison someone without trial.
A committal order is a down payment on the punishment that will be decided and that would be an inevitability it is more conceivable today that a detainee especially targeted by the regime can enjoy a provisional release or a dismissal.
This explains the systematic and deliberate violations of article 85 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, which sets the maximum period of pre-trial detention during the investigation and before the indictment division in a number of cases, including the famous case of the terrorist plot against State security.
We even went so far as to refuse to release a prisoner who, according to her defense team, had served her sentence. We refused to release Abir Moussi even though there was no legal basis for her continued incarceration.
Prison as a place of torture and degrading treatment
Many prisoners, even those on remand, were subjected to restrictions whose sole purpose was to punish these enemies of the regime, break their will to resist and damage their mental health and morale.
The director of Manouba prison has found even the simplest detail an opportunity to harm Sonia Dahmani, from humiliating body searches to the deprivation of hot water in winter, to the refusal of clothes and food brought by the family, not to mention inciting other inmates to attack her or punishing those who interact with her. Sonia Dahmani has seen it all, and she's not the only one: many inmates, their families and even their lawyers have fallen victim to her gratuitous assaults.
The African Court of Human and Peoples' Rights has ordered Tunisia to respect the most basic rights of detainees in the case of Moadh Ghanouchi v. République Tunisienne. Although the proceedings were contradictory, the State Counsel has not demonstrated respect for the detainees' right to choose and visit their lawyers, doctors and family, nor for their right to know the reasons for their detention.
Prison as a place of justice!
This is the new trend for the criminal divisions of the Tunis courts. Under certain conditions, Article 141 of the Code of Criminal Procedure allows trials to be held with a direct audiovisual connection from the prison premises. But this text and its application are fraught with legal problems.
First of all, the text was introduced into the code by a government decree during the Covid pandemic, but was never approved by the assembly of people's representatives, as required by the constitution, making it a null and void text.
Secondly, this article makes the chamber seized the competent authority to take the decision to hold this type of hearing, and not the president of a court and the public prosecutor for all chamber cases, as was the case at the Tunis Court of First Instance, even though the public prosecutor is a party to the case. The detainees in the case of the plot against State security were deprived of their right to attend their trial in person, as was the case with Ahmed Souab.
It should be pointed out that the very provisions of the aforementioned article 141 authorize the chamber hearing the case to decide to hold a hearing by audiovisual means without the consent of the accused only in the event of imminent danger or for the prevention of one of the transmissible diseases, while there is no longer any question of a pandemic, the eminent danger is also non-existent, since some inmates are deported from interior prisons to Mornaguia to attend court, which is absurd because it presumes that the authorities cannot secure the court or the transfer.
Finally, there is a major procedural shortcoming: when the defendants were called to appear at these hearings, many of them chose not to do so, but a prison guard responded to the president of the chamber by saying that he had refused to appear, whereas this unknown guard had no right to take part in the hearing, let alone to observe anything, and there was no evidence that the defendant in question had been prevented from doing so, or that he was in a state that revealed the after-effects of a violation that the prison authorities did not want to show to the court.
Prison for those who can't pay bail
While Kais Said has organized a veritable hunt for businessmen to prove his intransigence and the veracity of his story, labeling all successful businessmen as businessmen, corrupt and thieves of public property, as if economic success could only be achieved in this way. Presidential propaganda stigmatizes and denigrates them against a backdrop of social hatred unprecedented in Tunisia, and yet seems tolerated by certain plebs who believe that Kais Saied will play Robin Hood on their behalf. This persecution has been aggravated by the choice made by most of the victims, who have chosen not to communicate, giving in to various blackmail tactics. Some of them even agreed to pay astronomical sums as a penal transaction, but they are still in prison.
A new trend has recently emerged with the provisional release of two businessmen, Abdlaziz Makhloufi and Ahmed Abdelkefi, with exorbitant bail deposits in the millions of dinars, which seems more like a ransom, especially if we consider the role played by Atka Chebil and his front men in the requests made to this end, even though they were not defending the interested parties, who are well aware that a dismissal and the return of the bail or rather the ransom is impossible under current conditions.
As a result of this blackmail, which will perhaps be the new treatment reserved for detained businessmen, the regime is instituting a segregationist procedure, since detainees in Tunisian prisons cannot negotiate or post such large sums of bail. Prison is for the poor, at least not for those who can afford to pay such astronomical sums.
Prison is lethal
Conditions in Tunisian prisons are catastrophic. Independent reports are almost unanimous on this observation, but the news also proves it.
Prisoners' families have always warned of the neglect of their detained relatives' health.
The families of Sonia Dahmani, Ghazi Chouachi , Mostapha Jameli , Habib Elouz , Mohamed Ben Salem, Rached Khiari , Mondher Lounissi and many others have called for proper care to be given to their relative in prison.
The journey from prison to hospital is a real ordeal, with the prisoner shackled from foot to foot, even in intensive care, as was the case for Sihem Ben Sedrine.
Jaouhar Mbarek, who is dangerously leading a wild hunger strike, has aroused no interest from the authorities.
But other cases of negligence have been even more serious, documented since the summer, as was the case of Ali Ghdemssi, who died on March 30, 2025 in prison while being prosecuted in the "installingo" case, Akram Jamaoui in June 2024, or the young men Hazem Amara, Mohamed amin Jendoubi and Wassim Jaziri in July 2025. There are many cases of suspicious death that have not been documented, but even those that are the subject of a complaint do not presume serious treatment; impunity reigns.
Prison as an oubliette
Incarceration has become so commonplace, and release so exceptional, that we tend to forget those who have been languishing in prison for months or even years, because of Kais Said's unbridled arbitrariness. We're always interested in the newly prosecuted and detained.
Prisoners like Saadia mosbah , Chrifa Riahi , Ikbel Khaled ,Imen Ouerdani , Ghazi Chouachi , Ridha Belhadj, Issam Chebi, Rached Ghanouchi , Ali Arayedh , Nouredine Bhiri , HAMADI Jbali, Samir Bettayeb , Ayachi Zammel,Mourad Messoudi , Lotfi Mrayahi , Siouar Bargueoui , Saloua Ghrissa, Abdalah Said ,Hatab Ben Othmen, Kamel Ltaief , Mehdi ben Gharbia and many others are still unjustly in prison and still deserve solidarity and defense of their just cause, even though they will only get out by a political decision, just as they got in.
