The Comité pour le Respect des Libertés et des Droits de l'Homme en Tunisie (CRLDHT) expresses its deepest indignation at the sentencing of Sonia Dahmani to two years' imprisonment by the Tunis Court of First Instance on June 30, 2025. This verdict, handed down in the absence of pleadings and without any adversarial debate, marks a new stage in the collapse of the rule of law in Tunisia.

Lawyer, columnist and critical voice, Sonia Dahmani was violently arrested on May 11, 2024 on the premises of the Tunis Bar Association. Plainclothes agents entered without a warrant, forcibly dragged her away, humiliated and arrested her as she sought refuge in a supposedly protected space. Her arrest followed an ironic television broadcast in which she criticized the country's socio-economic situation. These remarks, taken out of context, were used to charge her under Decree-Law 54, a repressive text adopted in 2022 and regularly used to muzzle dissident voices.

For over a year, Sonia Dahmani has been the target of organized judicial harassment. The number of charges has multiplied, hearings have been scheduled without notifying the defense, and requests for provisional release have been systematically rejected. The decision of June 30, 2025, handed down after Sonia Dahmani and her lawyers had boycotted the trial for manifestly infringing the rights of the defense, without any adversarial debate, constitutes a clear denial of justice.

Her detention takes place against a backdrop of widespread repression. Sonia Dahmani is kept in prison in appalling conditions: prolonged isolation, degraded sanitary conditions, restrictions on visits, constant surveillance. Everything is being done to weaken her physically and morally. Her conviction is not based on any tangible facts, but solely on her free, critical, committed and anti-racist speech, the veracity of which had been proven by her lawyers with the help of documents that bizarrely disappeared from the file during the hearing. Worse still, she had already been convicted for these same statements in another case, and the president of the chamber stubbornly refused the defense's request to postpone the hearing in order to return the missing documents and demonstrate the violation of the fundamental rule of ne bis in idem.

While the outpouring of solidarity by French lawyers with Sonia Dahmani helped to mobilize lawyers who had come specially to attend the hearing, their presence was prohibited by the police, even though the president of the chamber had authorized it. The CRLDHT deplores the complicit absence of any assistance and presence on the part of the structures of the Tunisian bar and the Association of Young Tunisian Lawyers.

It's not just Sonia Dahmani they're trying to silence. They are trying to silence an entire society. Decree-Law 54, which imposes severe penalties for disseminating information deemed "false", has become the central tool in this authoritarian strategy. Journalists, lawyers, activists, trade unionists: no one is safe from an arbitrary trial.

The CRLDHT :

• Denounces this political condemnation and demands Sonia Dahmani's immediate and unconditional release.
• Calls for the repeal of Decree-Law 54 and an end to abusive prosecutions of human rights defenders in Tunisia.
• We also demand full judicial guarantees for all prisoners: access to an effective defense, a fair trial, and respect for dignity in detention.
• Deplores the silence and inaction of the President of the Tunisian Bar, the Bar Council and the Association of Young Tunisian Lawyers in the face of these serious violations of human rights and the right to a fair trial.
• Condemns the racist and xenophobic policy of repressing all support for migrants, of which the June 30, 2025 ruling is just one illustration.
• Alert on the political and moral responsibility of the European Commission in legitimizing human rights violations and the repression of humanitarian and anti-racist actions in Tunisia.

Sonia Dahmani used her voice to denounce an injustice. The Tunisian authorities have responded by imprisoning her. We will not accept freedom of expression being treated as a crime. Tunisia deserves better than authoritarianism, better than imposed silence. It deserves justice.