TUNIS: Jailed Tunisian opposition figure Abir Moussi was sentenced to an additional 12 years in prison on Thursday under a law criminalizing any “attack aimed at changing the form of government,” her lawyer told AFP.
A fierce critic of both President Kais Saied and the Islamist-inspired opposition Ennahdha party, Moussi has been in custody since her arrest in October 2023 outside the presidential palace where her party says she was seeking to lodge appeals against Saied’s decrees.
The latest sentence was in connection to that incident.
This is the third trial against Moussi, who was initially sentenced in August 2024 to two years in prison under Decree 54, a law Saied enacted in 2022 to combat “false news.” That sentence was later reduced on appeal.
Last June, just after completing her first jail term, she was sentenced again under the same law to two years in prison. The appeal process in that case is underway.
In a statement released before Friday’s verdict, the Free Destourian Party condemned “the injustice suffered by the party’s president, Abir Moussi, who has been arbitrarily detained since October 3, 2023.”
She is suspected by her detractors of wanting to return to the authoritarianism of former president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, overthrown in Tunisia’s 2011 revolt.
Meanwhile Saied, elected in 2019, has ruled by decree since a sweeping 2021 power grab and many of his opponents have been jailed.
Dozens of opposition figures were recently sentenced to harsh prison terms in a mass trial on charges of conspiracy against state security.
Others are being prosecuted under Decree 54, a law criticized by human rights advocates for its overly broad interpretation by the courts.