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Tunisian police on Tuesday arrested prominent opposition lawyer and longtime human rights defender Ayachi Hammami at his home outside the capital, acting on a five-year prison sentence issued against him last week in a major “conspiracy against state security” case, his family said.
Hammami is among at least 40 individuals, including politicians and business figures, who were sentenced to between two and 45 years in prison in the same case. Rights groups also included Human Rights Watch And Amnesty International The charges were described as politically motivated and part of a broader systematic effort by President Kais Saied to crush dissent in the country known as the birthplace of the Arab Spring.
Hammami announced this in a pre-recorded video following his arrest on Tuesday Facebook That they would launch an open hunger strike until their demands for independence were met.
He said, “I will also fight for the struggle by locking the cell in which Qais Syed had locked me.” “We are all victims of oppression by this regime, let us unite to change these conditions… Unity is the only clear and natural path for people when facing oppression.”
His daughter, Fida Hammami, told the Associated Press that her father’s prison sentence was issued by “a court that had lost all its independence” during Saeed’s tenure. The verdict, he added, was “the result of a sham trial based on baseless allegations and filled with violations of due process and fair trial rights.”
“My father’s arrest is the latest example of a crackdown on dissent, political opposition and all forms of critical expression in Tunisia,” he said. “He has fought for human rights, justice and democracy his entire life and he will continue to do so from his prison cell.”
She said her father is joining “dozens of men and women who are imprisoned simply because they exercised their human rights, protested the authoritarian drift in Tunisia, criticized the regime’s policies or worked to protect the most vulnerable.”
“They all deserve freedom,” he said. “He stood firm and smiled to the end. He left us with a message of strength and inspiration, and nothing will ever change that.”
Hammami was one of a wider group sentenced in a ruling issued last week by the Tunis Court of Appeal. Those decisions also led to the arrest of opposition leader and National Salvation Front leader Chama Issa, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Issa was walking home after taking part in an opposition protest on Saturday when plainclothes officers caught her and forced her into an unmarked civilian vehicle. She has since announced that she is launching a hunger strike to protest the circumstances of her arrest.
Saeed and his government rejected allegations that the proceedings were politically motivated, saying on several occasions that the prosecution was a necessary step to protect the state from serious national security threats and alleged conspiracies to destabilize the country.