Saber Ben Chouchane, who was given the dying penalty over posts insulting President Kais Saied, is launched.
Printed On 7 Oct 2025
A Tunisian man who had been sentenced to dying over Fb posts deemed offensive to President Kais Saied has been pardoned and launched from jail, his lawyer and a human rights group say.
Saber Ben Chouchane left jail in a single day and was at house along with his household, his lawyer Oussama Bouthelja informed information businesses on Tuesday, after a wave of criticism from human rights teams over the case.
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Saber’s brother, Jamal Chouchane, additionally confirmed to the Reuters information company that he had been freed whereas the rights group Amnesty Worldwide mentioned in a press release that he had been launched on account of “a presidential pardon”.
Ben Chouchane, who was arrested in January 2024, had been sentenced to dying by a court docket in Nabeul, east of Tunis, on Wednesday, Bouthelja informed the AFP information company.
His consumer had been discovered responsible of “insulting the president, the minister of justice and the judiciary”, spreading false information and a few of his social media posts had been additionally deemed to be incitement, Bouthelja added.
Bouthelja informed AFP that he had filed an attraction in opposition to his sentence on Friday however was later knowledgeable Ben Chouchane withdrew it, permitting a presidential pardon to be granted.
‘A severe precedent’
Bouthelja mentioned he had been “astonished” by the dying sentence, which rights teams mentioned represented a chilling new level of repression amid tightening restrictions on speech since Saied mounted a sweeping energy seize in 2021.
Heba Morayef, regional director at Amnesty Worldwide, had described the decision “as a major escalation and an outrageous assault on human rights”.
“Using capital punishment on this case is a stark and horrifying illustration of a authorities weaponizing the justice system to crush freedom of expression and the slightest sign of dissent,” she mentioned in a press release on Monday.
The Paris-based Tunisian human rights group CRLDHT had mentioned the decision set “a severe precedent” and Tunisia had “reached unprecedented ranges of human rights violations”.
Rule by presidential decree
Saied, who was elected in 2019, dissolved Tunisia’s elected parliament in 2021 and began ruling by decree, resulting in what rights teams mentioned has been a significant rollback of freedoms and sparking considerations over the erosion of judicial independence.
Particularly, a regulation criminalising “spreading false information”, enacted by Saied in September 2022, has been criticised by rights teams for stifling free speech.
Dozens of Saied’s critics have been prosecuted below the decree and are at the moment behind bars, in keeping with AFP.
