On 26 September, prominent opposition figure Jaouhar Ben Mbarek announced a hunger strike to protest his unjust detention in a trumped-up conspiracy case. On 2 October, five other detained defendants in the same case also announced a hunger strike. They include Khayyam Turki, Issam Chebbi, Ghazi Chaouachi, Ridha Belhaj and Abdelhamid Jelassi. Despite their releases in July 2023, political activists Chaima Issa and Lazhar Akremi – who spent nearly five months arbitrarily detained in the same case- have been arbitrarily banned from travelling and from “appearing in public spaces”. Tunisia’s anti-terrorism court is investigating all eight of them for trying to “change the nature of the state” under Article 72 of the Penal Code which carries the death penalty. We call on the Tunisian authorities to immediately release those detained, drop the charges against them, and lift the arbitrary restrictions on Chaima Issa and Lazhar Akremi.
