PARIS: France voiced concern Friday over the fate of a Tunisian journalist and vocal critic of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali who was arrested last week for allegedly assaulting a woman and faces trial. Taoufik Ben Brik was detained on October 29 after reporting to a police station in response to a summons in connection with an alleged attack on a woman in the street the week before. He is being held in a town outside the capital Tunis pending trial later this month.
“We are following the situation closely and we have expressed our concern to the ambassador of Tunisia” in Paris, said Foreign Ministry spokesman Bernard Valero. “We have also raised this issue with our European partners.”
France “is concerned by the difficulties hampering journalists and human rights defenders in Tunisia,” said Valero.
Medecins Sans Frontieres (Reporters Without Borders) said in a statement last week that the charges were bogus and that Ben Brik was too ill to stand trial.
The journalist faces up to five years in jail if convicted during his trial starting November 19.
Ben Brik’s lawyer Nejib Chebbi told AFP that “the only explanation” for his arrest was articles he recently published in the French press that were highly critical of the government.
Reporters Without Borders said Ben Brik is suffering from Cushing’s Syndrome, a disease that weakens the immune system, and is being denied access to the correct drugs.
Several journalists have been targeted in the past few days in Tunisia. The Reporters Without Borders Tunisia correspondent, Slim Boukhdhir, was assaulted by five men on a Tunis street on October 28. The same day, there were three attempts to force the door of Mouldi Zouabi, a correspondent for the London-based pan-Arab newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi and for the website of the Dubai-based satellite TV station Al-Arabiya. – AFP
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