TUNISIA
Zouheir Yahiaoui
Tunisia: Human Rights Watch Mourns the Death of Zouhair Yahiaoui
Zouhair Yahyaoui freed after 18 months in jail
Zoheir Yahiaoui was publishing the satirical electronic journal Tunezine under a pseudonym when he was arrested on June 4, 2002 at the cyber café where he worked. The authorities searched his house without a warrant, confiscating his computer materials. According to information provided by the defendant to his lawyers, Zouheir Yahiaoui was ill-treated during the first two days of his detention in the Ministry of the Interior. His lawyers were not allowed to visit him in prison until June 11, a whole week after his arrest.
On June 20, Yahiaoui was sentenced to a year in prison for disseminating “false information” and another sixteen months for theft of telecommunication services in connection with the unauthorized Tunezine. The Tunezine website, based in France, was an online information site and a forum where views on the political situation in Tunisia are exchanged. The charge of “stealing internet services” was fabricated by authorities; he worked unpaid in a cybercafe in exchange for having unlimited use of a computer station there, from which he edited his webzine. The second charge of knowingly disseminating false information related to a rumor he published on his website that there had been an armed attack at the Presidential palace that cost the lives of several guards. In July, an appeals court reduced the sentence to two years total. The website, www.tunezine.com is still online but has now become a solidarity site for Yahiaoui.
Zouheir Yahiaoui is the nephew of dismissed Judge Mokhtar Yahiaoui whose open letter to President Ben Ali on July 6, 2001 called for the constitutional principle of the independence of the judiciary to be respected. The letter was first published on Yahiaoui’s website. Since Zouheir Yahiaoui’s arrest, Judge Yahiaoui’s relatives have been harassed, prevented from traveling, and physically assaulted. Zouheir remains in prison. In January 2003, he went on a hunger strike for two weeks to demand better prison conditions.
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