TUNIS: A Tunisian court on Wednesday ordered two journalists to be held in remand until the completion of investigations into critical comments, a court spokesman said.

Broadcaster Borhen Bssais and political commentator Mourad Zeghidi were arrested Saturday under a decree criminalizing “spreading false information” among other charges, spokesman Mohamed Zitouna said.

Zeghidi is being investigated over social media statements last February and a post in support of Mohamed Boughalleb, another journalist and critic of President Kais Saied who has been detained separately.

Bssais was arrested on accusations of “having harmed President Kais Saied through radio broadcasts and statements” online between 2019 and 2022, according to his lawyer Nizar Ayed.

Their trial is set to begin on May 22, according to their lawyers.

Both media figures are prosecuted under a law ratified by Saied in September 2022.

The law punishes people with up to five years in prison for the use of social media to “produce, spread (or) disseminate ... false news” and “slander others, tarnish their reputation, financially or morally harm them.”

Journalists and opposition figures have said it has been used to stifle dissent.

Since the decree came into force, more than 60 journalists, lawyers and opposition figures have been prosecuted under it, according to the National Union of Tunisian Journalists.

The same night Bssais and Zeghidi were taken into police custody, masked police raided the Tunisian bar association and arrested lawyer Sonia Dahmani, also on the same law.

On Monday, another lawyer was forcibly arrested at the association’s headquarters.

The president of the bar, Hatem Meziou, on Tuesday called for an end to “the abuse of power” and “violence” targeting the lawyers.

The European Union also expressed concern over a string of arrests of civil society figures in Tunisia — the latest sign of a tightening clampdown on freedoms under Saied.

Nongovernmental organizations have decried a rollback of freedoms in Tunisia since Saied began ruling by decree after a sweeping power grab in 2021.

DUBAI: Kurdish security forces arrested Barzan Majeed, described as one of the world’s most notorious people smugglers, in Iraqi Kurdistan on Sunday morning.

Nicknamed “Scorpion,” the fugitive is believed to have been involved in smuggling an estimated 10,000 people across the English Channel to the UK. He was arrested days after the release of a BBC podcast series in which investigative journalists tracked him down to the city of Sulaymaniyah in Iraq and interviewed him there.

During the interview, Majeed said he had lost count of the number of people he helped to smuggle, adding: “Maybe a thousand, maybe 10,000. I don’t know, I didn’t count.”

He admitted that between 2016 and 2019 he was one of two people who helped run a people-smuggling operation in Belgium and France but denied he was the mastermind of the operation.

“A couple of people, when they get arrested, they say, ‘We’re working for him’ — they want to get less (of a) sentence,” he said.

Originally from Iraq, Majeed moved to the city of Nottingham, in England, in 2013 but was deported two years later. He had been on the run since failing to appear at a court in Belgium for a sentencing hearing in November 2022.

The UK’s National Crime Agency issued a warrant for his arrest that same year. The agency, which confirmed his arrest, said: “We are grateful to the BBC for highlighting his case and remain determined to do all we can to disrupt and dismantle the criminal networks involved in smuggling people to the UK, wherever they operate.”

A senior member of the Kurdistan Regional Government confirmed its officials had used information from the BBC investigation to locate and arrest Majeed.

Each year, thousands of people flee Iraq, including its Kurdistan Region, in the hope of finding a better life in the UK or other parts of Europe. In many cases, they pay people smugglers to transport them, but the routes and methods used by the smugglers are often dangerous and the migrants face harsh weather and potentially deadly travel conditions.

Germany deported 222 Iraqi citizens in the first three months of this year as part of an alleged agreement between Berlin and Baghdad to deport migrants who do not qualify to remain in Germany, media organization Rudaw, which is based in Iraqi Kurdistan, reported this week.