Following the announcement made by his family, Mehdi Ben Gharbia, former minister, politician and businessman, went on a wildcat hunger strike on November 10, 2025 to contest a detention warrant suddenly issued in a murder case in which he is stubbornly implicated.

Indeed, Mr. Ben Gharbia, who had already been prosecuted in other cases, was about to serve his full four-year prison sentence, which should have led to his imminent release.
However, just as he was preparing to leave prison, a new committal order was suddenly issued, without any logical basis, by the investigating judge of the second investigating office of the Tunis court of first instance, under the pretext of carrying out an instruction from the indictment chamber in its decision of May 15, 2025.

This decision by the indictment division suggested the detention of 31 people - most of them unnamed or unidentified, merely designated as telephone line holders, some of them even deceased.
And yet, in this case, the perpetrator was arrested and admitted to the crime. There is therefore no logical reason to believe that there were accomplices in the murder, robbery, embezzlement or rape with the use of violence.
Despite this, the indictment division ruled that all the people in the murderer's network of contacts should be considered accomplices.

Only Mehdi Ben Gharbia and two other suspects were the subject of a committal order - at a more than dubious time - signed by a magistrate appointed by a simple memo from the Minister of Justice, a few days earlier, even though the case was before the Court of Cassation, seized of an appeal lodged by another defendant.

This committal order, issued without a hearing, without even notifying the person concerned of the facts or charges against him, constitutes a clear violation of domestic and international standards. It reveals the reality of an extrajudicial and political decision, designed to prevent Mehdi Ben Gharbia from regaining his freedom, despite the flagrant violation of his right to a fair trial, as is now the case for many defendants in Tunisia.

The CRLDHT 

• Strongly condemns this long-standing instrumentalization of the justice system and these flagrant violations of the constitutionally guaranteed rights of Mehdi Ben Gharbia and all those subject to trial in Tunisia;
• Expresses its full solidarity with Mehdi Ben Gharbia and all detainees on hunger strike, while inviting them to suspend these life-threatening strikes;
• Calls on Tunisian civil society and the Tunisian people to engage in all forms of civil and peaceful resistance, in order to reclaim their destiny, relaunch the democratic transition and break with the anarchy and arbitrariness that reign in the country today.