Jailed Tunisian opposition figure Jaouhar Ben Mbarek goes on hunger strike | Human Rights News

Ben Mbarek, along with about 40 other critics of the president, is being tried on state conspiracy charges.

A jailed Tunisian opposition activist facing state conspiracy charges has launched a hunger strike to protest against being barred from appearing in person at his own trial, according to his defence team.

Jaouhar Ben Mbarek, member of the opposition National Salvation Front and Citizens Against the Coup group which oppose President Kais Saied, insists on his right to be present in court to “refute the false charges” against him, lawyer Samir Dilou said in a statement on Facebook on behalf of Ben Mbarek’s defence team.

Dilou said Ben Mbarek began his hunger strike on March 30.

Detained since February 2023, Ben Mbarek is one of dozens of Tunisian politicians, activists, journalists and other critics of the president who have been targeted in what rights groups describe as a sweeping crackdown on dissent.

About 40 of the defendants, including Ben Mbarek, were put on trial together in March, facing charges ranging from “plotting against state security” to “belonging to a terrorist group”.

Human Rights Watch has condemned the mass trial as a “mockery” and urged Tunisia to “immediate release” all those charged. Bassam Trifi, head of the Tunisian League for the Defence of Human Rights, denounced the proceedings as one of Tunisia’s “biggest judicial scandals”.

Ben Mbarek, a former constitutional law professor, is among nine defendants barred from attending courtroom sessions, deemed too dangerous to be released from custody.

However, he argued that the remote attendance option offered to him prevents him from mounting an effective defence. Instead, he insists on “being present to defend himself and expose the baseless accusations against him in a proper courtroom setting – not in a staged remote session held in a prison facility,” according to his defence team.

The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), an international rights group comprised of leading judges and lawyers, also criticised Tunisia’s judiciary for “systematic violations” of detainees’ rights in pre-trial proceedings, which it said could undermine the whole trial.

Charges of rolling back the democratic gains of the country’s revolution of 2011 have dogged Saied since his dramatic power grab of July 2021, when he shuttered parliament and dismissed its speaker and prime minister, introducing a period of presidential rule by decree. Saied later dissolved the independent Supreme Judicial Council and ushered in a new constitution that bolstered his rule.

Many of those currently on trial, including Ben Mbarek, were prominent critics of those moves.

Others on trial include former presidential chief of staff Nadia Akacha, former head of intelligence Kamel Guizani and the former leader of opposition party Ennahdha, Abdelhamid Jelassi, who, like Ben Mbarek, was arrested in 2023.

Saied, who has called the defendants “traitors and terrorists”, says he will not be a dictator, but those who are corrupt must be held accountable.