TUNIS: A Tunisian court overturned on Wednesday a journalist’s prison sentence for revealing information about the security services, his lawyer said, paving the way for a retrial.
Khalifa Guesmi, a correspondent for Tunisia’s most popular radio station Mosaique FM, was convicted in November and sentenced to a year in prison, later upgraded to five years on appeal.
The Court of Cassation “invalidated the five-year judgment and ordered it to be reviewed on appeal,” Guesmi’s lawyer, Rahal Jallali, told AFP.
He said Guesmi should be released by Thursday morning.
The journalist remains under prosecution according to his lawyer, under Article 34 of the anti-terrorism law which “punishes with 10 to 20 years’ imprisonment” anyone who publishes information “for the benefit of a terrorist organization.”
Journalists and civil society representatives gathered in Tunis on Wednesday to show support for Guesmi and to call for his immediate release.
Local and international NGOs have launched several calls for his release and condemned the five-year prison sentence as “a sham verdict” and “a major setback for the judicial system.”
They have criticized what they say is a marked decline in press freedom in Tunisia since President Kais Saied seized full control of the country in July 2021.
Jailed since September 3, Guesmi was found guilty of “participating in the intentional disclosing of information related to interception, infiltration, and audiovisual surveillance or the data collected therein.”
He was held for a week in March 2022, after Mosaique FM published on its website information about the dismantling of a “terrorist cell” and the arrest of its members.
Tunisia court overturns journalist’s five-year jail term
https://arab.news/znbhx
Tunisia court overturns journalist’s five-year jail term
- Khalifa Guesmi was convicted in November for revealing information about the security services
Saudi Arabia ‘ideal partner’ in shaping next wave of intelligent age, communication minister tells WEF
- Abdullah Al-Swaha said aim was to “help the world achieve the next $100 trillion by energizing the intelligence age”
DAVOS: Saudi Arabia has accelerated efforts in “energizing the intelligent age,” making the Kingdom the world’s ideal partner in shaping the next wave of the technological age, said the minister of communication and information technology.
Speaking during a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Abdullah Al-Swaha said the aim was to “help the world achieve the next $100 trillion by energizing the intelligence age.”
He said the Kingdom was expanding global partnerships for the benefit of humanity and highlighted both local and international achievements.
“We believe the more prosperous the Kingdom, the Middle East, is, the more prosperous the world is. And it is not a surprise that we fuel 50 percent of the digital economy in the kingdom or the region,” he told the audience. He added the Kingdom fueled three times the tech force of its neighbors and, as a result, 50 percent of venture capital funding.
Al-Swaha said Saudi Arabia was focused both on artificial intelligence acceleration and adoption. At home, he said, the Kingdom was doubling the use of agentic AI in the public and private sector to increase worker productivity tenfold. He also cited the world’s first fully robotic heart transplant, which was conducted in Saudi Arabia.
“If we double down on talent, technology, and build trust with partners, we can achieve success,” he said. “And we are following the same blueprint for the intelligence age.”
He said the Kingdom aimed to be a “testbed” for innovators and investors. Rapid technological adoption and investment have boosted Saudi Arabia’s non-oil economy, with non-oil activities accounting for 56 percent of GDP and surpassing $1.2 trillion in 2025, ahead of the Vision 2030 target.
In terms of adoption, Al-Swaha said the Kingdom had introduced the Arabic-language AI model, Allam, to be adopted across Adobe product series. It has also partnered with Qualcomm to bring the first hybrid AI laptop and endpoints to the world.
“These are true testimonies that the kingdom is not going local or regional; we are going global,” he said.
