Tunisia, Tunisia – Prominent Tunisian columnist Haythem El Mekki and radio host Elyes Gharbi have been released by a prosecutor after being questioned about their comments about the country’s powerful security forces.
On Monday, the two journalists were questioned at a police station in the El Gorjani district of the capital Tunis as their colleagues and human rights activists protested outside.
No date has yet been set for their next performance. Nor have any charges against them been confirmed. Both men remain free on bail pending further charges and a possible trial.
The case relates to a complaint filed by one of Tunisia’s powerful security unions over comments made by El Mekki on May 15 on Gharbi’s Midi Show on Mosaique FM radio.
El Mekki criticized police recruiting methods after the killing of six people, including two pilgrims, at the El Ghriba Synagogue on Djerba Island by a serving National Guard earlier in May.
The privately owned Mosaique FM is one of the most listened to stations in Tunisia and the Midi Show is extremely popular with its 1.5 million listeners.
“The Midi Show is one of the last radio programs in which opposition members are heard and received,” said activist Nessryne Jelalia, who gathered with about 100 journalists and human rights activists outside the Tunis police barracks where El Mekki and Gharbi were held. interrogated.
Silence deviations
Jelalia said El Mekki’s first touch of national fame came about 30 years ago this month through his involvement in an anti-censorship campaign – and now he faces charges on free speech charges. Of all the Tunisian online bloggers whose activities contributed to the revolution in the country, El Mekki is the only one left.
People listen to hear him speak, she said, “about the political situation, about the news and his speech is drawing a large audience. He’s one of the few we have.”
Jelalia praised El Mekki’s role as a satirist of modern political mores.
Monday’s hearing was the latest in a growing number of prosecutions by President Kais Saied and his allies.
Following the arrests of Saied’s political opponents and critics, there has been an unparalleled crackdown on dissent in the media and, it seems, specifically within the independent radio station where El Mekki works, Mosaique FM.
In early February, the station’s director-general, Noureddine Boutar, was arrested and later charged with money laundering. However, according to his lawyers, the station is “editorial lineand the Midi Show in particular also featured prominently during the questioning.
Last week, one of the station’s regional correspondents, Khalifa Guesmi, was sentenced to five years in prison after refusing to reveal his sources for a security story he had written.
Questions about the agency’s future circulated widely among the crowds gathered outside the police barracks.
“I think President Saied is very annoyed by the Midi Show and has been targeting this radio station for several months,” said El Mekki’s brother, Thameur, the editor-in-chief of the leading independent media platform. Nawat, said. “Mosaique FM is one of the last free spaces in the mainstream media in Tunisia.
“By attacking two such popular figures [El Mekki and Gharbi] you end up taking to the streets,” Thameur said, gesturing around the crowd, “look, if we can get that many people in 24 hours, think what we can do in weeks.”
In any case, for El Mekki, this latest clash with the security services comes after a series of previous confrontations with authorities.
Emerges as the anonymous blogger BylaskoEl Mekki began his clandestine career by fiercely targeting censorship under former president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
“Since the revolution, I have been targeted on a daily and massive level,” El Mekki told Al Jazeera in a recent interview.
“I think the system is using me as one [tool]he had said, describing how authorities could use his freedom to claim they were protecting press freedom. “They’re trying to prove it’s not a dictatorship,” he explained. “The president’s supporters look at me and say, ‘You call him a dictator, but you’re still free. How can he be a dictator?’”