On the morning of Monday April 21, while a press conference was being held at the Maison de l'Avocat in Bab Bnet, Tunis, to shed light on the scandal of April 18, 2025 and the violations committed by the ^5th Criminal Chamber of the Tunis Court of First Instance - as well as those perpetrated on a massive scale by judges aligned with the regime, agents of the anti-terrorist brigade invaded the home of Maître Ahmed Souab, one of the most active defense lawyers in the political cases fabricated by the Kaïs Saïed regime against its opponents.

Maître Ahmed Souab has been a media figure since his time at the Administrative Court, where he served as a magistrate. He has become popular for his outspokenness and legal expertise. He has consistently denounced Kaïs Saïed's coup d'état and his liberticidal enterprise, destroying the gains of the revolution and the principles of the rule of law. His virulent criticism of anarchy and the president's failure has made him a choice prey for a regime that can only respond with repression and arrests, lacking the arguments to defend its meagre record and absurd policies - or rather, its reactions.

The search of Maître Souab's home ended with his arrest. He was taken to the anti-terrorist section of the Tunis Court of First Instance, where the investigating judge of the 12th office, Bassma Arouri (the same judge who issued a committal order against Me Sonia Dahmani without having interviewed her), decided to place him in police custody for five days, while forbidding him to see his lawyers for 48 hours, as provided for in the organic anti-terrorist law. He was then transferred to the Bouchoucha prison.

Hanen Kadess, spokeswoman for the Pôle Judiciaire Antiterroriste, told the TAP agency that the public prosecutor at the Tunis Court of Appeal had ordered the opening of a judicial investigation against lawyer Ahmed Souab for "terrorist charges and common law offenses", in connection with, among other things, "threats to commit terrorist crimes in order to force a person to do or not do something" and "exposure to danger to the life of a protected person, accompanied by threats punishable by criminal penalties".

She pointed out that the opening of the investigation followed the broadcasting of a video sequence in which Maître Ahmed Souab appeared in front of the Maison de l'Avocat on April 19, 2025, declaring in Tunisian dialect, literally: "The knives are not on the throats of the detainees; the knives are on the throat of the president of the chamber who is going to rule now, it's a lot of files", while making a throat-cutting gesture with his hand at neck level.

She added that this fact had been noted by the National Terrorist Crimes Investigation Unit in a report forwarded by the Public Prosecutor's Office of the Judicial Pole for Combating Terrorism to the Attorney General, in view of the defendant's status as a lawyer. In view of the alleged seriousness of the acts, a judicial investigation was opened, following the legal procedures linked to the defendant's status as a lawyer.

Even before discussing the factual and legal absurdity of this prosecution, it must be remembered that it is in itself illegal. It violates article 46 of decree no. 79/2011 of August 20, 2011 on the legal profession, which states:
"In the event of criminal proceedings against a lawyer, the president of the competent regional section must be notified immediately.
Thelawyer must be referred by the Public Prosecutor to the examining magistrate, who must proceed with his interrogation in the presence of the president of the competent regional section or the person he has mandated."
There is no evidence that these procedures were followed.

On the substance, it is clear that Me Souab was using imagery to denounce the threat made by the authorities in power against the president of the chamber. This image has nothing to do with terrorism or justice: rather, it is the umpteenth violation of the right to freedom of expression to be used by the repressive apparatus of the police state for a few words of criticism uttered by Maître Ahmed Souab.

The sinister exhibition in which this regime indulges shows no sign of stopping with the masquerade of the so-called "conspiracy against state security" trial - a trial which has inflicted more than 800 years in prison in less than a minute of deliberation. Kaïs Saïed will certainly not stop there, for through these arrests, he is seeking to convince himself to defend his coup d'état and appease his own phobia of being overthrown in his turn - an undertaking doomed to failure, given the catastrophic situation that is raging across the board.