On Wednesday (1st October), a 51-year-old man was sentenced to death for criticising Kais Saied, the President of Muslim-majority Tunisia, over Facebook.
A court in Tunisia has found the man guilty of ‘spreading false information online’, ‘insulting the President’ and ‘attempting to overthrow the State.’
It claimed that the Facebook posts of the man somehow icnited violence and violated the penal code of the country. It must be mentioned that Tunisia has not carried out death penalty since 1991.
In a statement, the man’s lawyer Oussama Bouthelja stated, “Most of the content he shared was copied from other pages, and some posts received no engagement at all. In court, he said his intent was to draw authorities’ attention to his difficult living conditions, not to incite unrest.”
Rights groups in the country have raised alarms over the ruling, highlighting that it sets a bad precedent for free speech.
Under the current constitution of Tunisia, it is mandatory for the President to be a Muslim. Since coming to power in 2021, Kais Saied has suspended the parliament, consolidated all powers and jailed his opponents.
