Tunisian opponent Sihem Bensedrine announced on Tuesday (March 7th) that she was banned from leaving the country after being charged as part of an investigation into a report written by a body she chaired on crimes committed under the dictatorship.
Created in 2014 in the wake of the revolt that ended the dictatorship in 2011, the Truth and Dignity Commission (IVD) was responsible for listing the violations committed by state representatives between 1955 and 2013, a period that covers the presidency of Habib Bourguiba (1957-1987), of his successor Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali (1987-2011), but also the post-revolutionary troubles.
At the end of its mandate, in 2018, the IVD had written a voluminous report which was published in the Official Journal in 2020. In it, the body, which heard nearly 50,000 alleged victims and transmitted 173 cases to justice, called for “dismantling a system of corruption, repression and dictatorship” persisting within state institutions.
Twenty personalities arrested
In a press release sent to AFP, Ms. Bensedrine said that since February 2021 she had been the subject of a judicial investigation for suspicion of falsification of this report. She is suspected of having received a bribe to add a paragraph accusing the Banque Franco-Tunisienne (BFT) of corruption, which she denies.
Ms. Bensedrine was banned from leaving the territory after being summoned Thursday by an investigating judge at the financial and economic judicial pole, who notified her of her indictment for “having procured unjustified advantages”, for having “caused harm to the State” and for “falsification”, and this on a request from the prosecution dated February 20, she said in the press release. She was surprised that the measures targeting her were announced on February 17 by a columnist “reputed to be close to the Minister of Justice”. No comment on this case could be obtained from judicial sources.
About twenty personalities in political, media and business circles have been arrested in Tunisia since the beginning of February. President Kais Saied, who assumed full powers in July 2021, called those arrested “terrorists” and claimed they were involved in a “conspiracy against state security”.
