Salamander

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE

Office of the Spokesman

For Immediate Release   March 1, 2007
2007/151

Media Note

Imprisonment of Tunisian Activist

Reporters Without Borders activists demonstrated outside the Tunisian tourist office in Paris on 1st March to protest against the continued detention of lawyer Mohammed Abbu , who has spent two years in jail for criticising President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in online articles.

On March 1, 2007, Tunisian human rights lawyer and activist Mohamed Abbou will complete his second year in prison. Abbou's supporters around the world have declared an international day of protest to call for his release from prison.  He is held in harsh conditions and has suffered beatings by prison guards and other inmates.

Abbou's wife, Samia Abbou, is being persistently harassed by the security forces as a result of her struggle for the release of her husband. Last December, while on her way to visit her husband with other human rights defenders, she was brutally assaulted and beaten by a group of forty men right in front of several police officers, who looked on without intervening.

English will follow

 

عامين وراء القضبان
محمد عبو المتمسك بحقه في حرية التفكير والتعبير ورفضه الخضوع للابتزاز

I just received news now that the Tunisia Monitoring Group mission in Tunisia , have been seriously harassed by plain clothed policemen while accompanying Samia Abbou in her weekly trip to Le Kef to visit her imprisoned husband Mohammed Abbou.

Plain Clothed Policemen prevented the members of the mission from crossing the road to Le Kef prison. They prevented them from taking pictures. Meanwhile, those thugs were taking pictures of the mission. Samia, fortunately, was able to visit her husband.

The car was stopped while on the way and made to wait for ten minutes. This has been a systematic harassment that Samia faces every Thursday when she goes to visit Abbou.

Vienna, 1 March 2007

The International Press Institute (IPI) , the global network of editors, leading journalists and media executives in over 120 countries, strongly condemns the continued imprisonment of Internet writer and human rights lawyer Mohamed Abbou , who has been jailed for exercising his right to freedom of expression.

Tunisian Internet writer still jailed after two years

New York, February 28, 2007—The Committee to Protect to Journalists today called on Tunisia to free an Internet writer jailed two years ago for Web articles that criticized President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and described torture in Tunisian prisons.