Tunisian rights lawyer released after terror court term

Former judge and lawyer Ahmed Souab was released on February 23rd after completing a 10-month sentence derived from a trial that has been widely denounced by rights organizations as part of a growing repression of dissent in Tunisia, as reported by AFP.

Souab, 69, was arrested in April 2025 after he publicly denounced a mass trial of political leaders and President Kais Saied’s critics, on whose legal defense team he was working.

He was initially sentenced on October 7th to five years in prison following a trial that reportedly “lasted less than two minutes”. An appeals court later reduced the sentence to 10 months, a term he has now completed according to his legal team. 

Souab’s arrest followed his statements in which he alleged that judges overseeing last year’s high-profile mass trial were subjected to political pressure to impose heavy sentences. Around 40 defendants were convictions up to 45 years on charges including “conspiracy against state security” and “belonging to a terrorist group”. 

In a speech criticising the proceedings, Souab accused authorities of putting “a knife to the throat of the judge who was to deliver the verdict”, accompanying the metaphor with a gesture that prosecutors later cited in referring his case to an anti-terror court. 

He was charged under Decree 54, a 2022 law enacted by Saied to combat what authorities describe as “false news”. Human Rights advocates argue that the decree’s broad language has enabled the prosecution of critics and the restriction of free expression.

UN Special Rapporteur on human rights defenders Mary Lawlor called Souab’s conviction “baseless charges,” raising concerns over the treatment of lawyers and activists in Tunisia.

AFP, maghrebi.org