AAAS Scientific Responsibility, Human Rights and Law Program

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AAAS Human Rights Action Network

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FACTS OF THE CASE:

On 29 September 2001, a Tunis criminal court formally suspended the one-year prison sentence of Dr. Moncef Marzouki. As a condition of the suspended sentence, Dr. Marzouki will lose certain civil rights, including the right to be elected to a government position.

Last December, Dr. Marzouki was sentenced to twelve months in jail. According to Amnesty International (AI), the trial failed to meet international standards of fairness. Dr. Marzouki was sentenced to eight months in jail for maintaining an outlawed organization, the National Council on Liberties (Conseil national pour les libertés en Tunisie, CNLT). The CNLT is an active human rights organization that often speaks out against government repression. The remainder of his sentence was for charges of "spreading false information liable to disturb the public order." These charges were related to a private paper critical of Tunisia's human rights policies that Dr. Marzouki wrote for an October 2000 regional meeting of human rights defenders in Morocco.

The prosecution requested an appeal of the sentence because they consider it too lenient. Dr. Marzouki, who had remained at liberty since the December sentence, announced that he would not seek an appeal, citing the apparent lack of independence and fairness in the Tunisian judiciary. In a written statement, he declared, "[t]he political process in Tunisia, since independence, has had only one outcome: condemnation. In a dictatorship, the executive branch only allows the judicial function to clothe with a veil of legality, political repression or vengeance."

Dr. Marzouki, one of Tunisia's leading human rights defenders, has been the subject of numerous AAASHRAN alerts since 1994, when the Science and Human Rights Program first took up his case.

Amnesty International reports that two of its delegates who were in Tunisia to observe the appeal hearing were detained and ill treated by plainclothes security officers. Traffic police stopped the delegates on 29 September as they were returning from a meeting with a Tunisian human rights defender. A plainclothes security officer forced them out of their car and into a separate car without number plates. Their belongings, including a computer and all of their documents, were forcibly taken. AI reports that a plainclothes officer physically assaulted one of the delegates while another officer took his bag. Both delegates were released.

AI has contacted the Tunisian authorities and has requested a prompt and thorough investigation into the incident. The organization is also requesting assurances from the government that neither of the delegates nor the people they have been in contact with in Tunisia will be further harassed.

(Source of information for this case is Amnesty International.)

RECOMMENDED ACTION:

No further action is needed at this time. Many thanks to those who sent appeals.

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