(RSF/IFEX) – On 4 April 2003, RSF repeated its call for the immediate release of jailed cyber-dissident Zouhair Yahyaoui, who began another hunger strike a few days ago to protest against his recent ill-treatment. “We are not surprised to see the Tunisian regime taking advantage of the international media’s focus on Iraq to step up […]
(RSF/IFEX) – On 4 April 2003, RSF repeated its call for the immediate release of jailed cyber-dissident Zouhair Yahyaoui, who began another hunger strike a few days ago to protest against his recent ill-treatment.
“We are not surprised to see the Tunisian regime taking advantage of the international media’s focus on Iraq to step up pressure on political prisoners such as Yahyaoui,” said RSF Secretary-General Robert Ménard. “This is disgraceful and we call on the president to free him at once, along with another journalist, Hamadi Jebali, who has been in jail since 1991.”
Yahyaoui’s family said that when they visited him on 3 April at Borj el-Amri prison, 30 kilometres from Tunis, he could not move about normally because he was physically weakened. He told them he had begun another hunger strike. In recent weeks, he said, guards had served him soiled food, prevented him from reading, seized his letters, stopped his daily exercise periods and threatened him.
Yahyaoui also said he was placed in solitary confinement for two days with only stale bread to eat after being accused of inciting prisoners to go on a hunger strike. His family said he was very thin and depressed. He had staged an earlier hunger strike from 17 to 30 January to protest against his prison conditions and to demand his release.
Yahyaoui, founder of the website TUNeZINE, was jailed on 4 June 2002 after being arrested by plainclothes police in a Tunis cybercafé. On 10 July, the Tunis Appeals Court sentenced him to two years’ imprisonment for “spreading false news”. During his interrogation, he was subjected to three “suspension” sessions, a means of torture by which a person is suspended by the arms with their feet barely touching the ground.
Using the pseudonym “Ettounsi” (Arabic for “Tunisian”), he set up his website in July 2001 to distribute news about the fight for democracy and freedom in Tunisia. He published opposition material on his website and was the first to publish a letter from his uncle, Judge Mokhtar Yahyaoui, to President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali criticising the country’s legal system.
Jebali, publisher of the weekly “Al Fajr”, organ of the An Nahda Islamist militant movement, has been held since 1991.
The Tunis Military Court sentenced him to 16 years’ imprisonment in 1992, for “aggressively seeking to change the nature of the state” and “belonging to an illegal organisation”. At the time, he had just finished serving a one-year sentence for publishing an article critical of the country’s military court system.
He went on hunger strike from mid-January to mid-February 2003, in protest over jail conditions and to demand his freedom. In mid-March, he was moved from Bizerte prison to Sfax prison.
