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
BBC says will fight Trump's $10 bn defamation lawsuit
LONDON: The BBC said Tuesday it would fight a $10-billion lawsuit brought by US President Donald Trump against the British broadcaster over a documentary that edited his 2021 speech ahead of the US Capitol riot.
“As we have made clear previously, we will be defending this case,” a BBC spokesperson said in a statement sent to AFP, adding the company would not be making “further comment on ongoing legal proceedings.”
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Miami, seeks “damages in an amount not less than $5,000,000,000” for each of two counts against the British broadcaster, for alleged defamation and violation of the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act.
The video that triggered the lawsuit spliced together two separate sections of Trump’s speech on January 6, 2021 in a way that made it appear he explicitly urged supporters to attack the Capitol, where lawmakers were certifying Joe Biden’s 2020 election win.
The lawsuit comes as the UK government on Tuesday launched the politically sensitive review of the BBC’s Royal Charter, which outlines the corporation’s funding and governance and needs to be renewed in 2027.
As part of the review, it launched a public consultation on issues including the role of “accuracy” in the BBC’s mission and contentious reforms to the corporation’s funding model, which currently relies on a mandatory fee for anyone in the country who watches television.
Minister Stephen Kinnock stressed after the lawsuit was filed that the UK government “is a massive supporter of the BBC.”
The BBC has “been very clear that there is no case to answer in terms of Mr.Trump’s accusation on the broader point of libel or defamation. I think it’s right the BBC stands firm on that point,” Kinnock told Sky News on Tuesday.
Trump, 79, had said the lawsuit was imminent, claiming the BBC had “put words in my mouth,” even positing that “they used AI or something.”
The documentary at issue aired last year before the 2024 election, on the BBC’s “Panorama” flagship current affairs program.
Apology letter
“The formerly respected and now disgraced BBC defamed President Trump by intentionally, maliciously, and deceptively doctoring his speech in a brazen attempt to interfere in the 2024 Presidential Election,” a spokesperson for Trump’s legal team said in a statement to AFP.
“The BBC has a long pattern of deceiving its audience in coverage of President Trump, all in service of its own leftist political agenda,” the statement added.
The British Broadcasting Corporation, whose audience extends well beyond the United Kingdom, faced a period of turmoil last month after a media report brought renewed attention to the edited clip.
The scandal led the BBC director general, Tim Davie, and the organization’s top news executive, Deborah Turness, to resign.
Trump’s lawsuit says the edited speech in the documentary was “fabricated and aired by the Defendants one week before the 2024 Presidential Election in a brazen attempt to interfere in and influence the Election’s outcome to President Trump’s detriment.”
The BBC has denied Trump’s claims of legal defamation, though BBC chairman Samir Shah has sent Trump a letter of apology.
Shah also told a UK parliamentary committee last month the broadcaster should have acted sooner to acknowledge its mistake after the error was disclosed in a memo, which was leaked to The Daily Telegraph newspaper.
The BBC lawsuit is the latest in a string of legal actions Trump has taken against media companies in recent years, several of which have led to multi-million-dollar settlements.
