TUNIS: A Tunisian appeals court commuted the prison sentence of a TV broadcaster from one year to eight months on Friday, his lawyer told AFP.
Borhen Bssais was initially handed a 12-month sentence under a decree punishing “spreading false information” and “defaming others or damaging their reputation.”
“The Court of Appeal in the capital Tunis decided to reduce Bssais’s sentence from 12 months to eight,” his lawyer, Nizar Ayed, said.
Bssais was arrested on May 11 and charged with “attacking President Kais Saied through radio broadcasts and statements between 2019 and 2022.”
Tunisia’s Decree 54, the law under which Bssais was convicted, was enacted by Saied in 2022 to combat “false news.”
But critics have said it has been used to stifle political dissent as the country prepares for a presidential election set for October 6.
Over the past 18 months, more than 60 critical voices have been prosecuted under the decree, according to the National Union of Tunisian Journalists.
Amnesty International Secretary General Agnes Callamard said on Friday she found it “alarming and distressing to witness the drastic rollback of the human rights progress that Tunisia had made since the 2011 revolution.”
“The institution of justice has been brought to heel, while arrests and arbitrary prosecutions are multiplying,” she said in a statement after a four-day visit to the country.
