Masked Tunisian police arrest prominent lawyer for media comments
Al Jazeera
Masked police are filmed storming the premises of the Bar Association’s Lawyers’ House to arrest lawyer Sonia Dahmani.
A prominent Tunisian lawyer and two journalists have been arrested in the latest move of a presidential administration that has shown little tolerance for criticism.
The arrest of lawyer and commentator Sonia Dahmani on Saturday night was caught on camera as she was bundled out of the Lawyers’ House, part of the legal union, where she had been sheltering.
The same evening, TV and radio presenter Borhen Bssais and political commentator Mourad Zeghidi were also arrested for comments about the administration, before being held under a “48-hour detention warrant and [they] will have to appear before an examining magistrate”, their lawyer Ghazi Mrabet told the AFP news agency.
Dahmani was arrested after she refused to respond to a summons issued on Thursday for questioning. The summons was reportedly regarding comments she made on a television programme on Wednesday.
Appearing on the Donya Zina programme on the Carthage Plus channel, Dahmani had responded to host Braham Bsiss during a discussion on whether the sub-Saharan African refugees and migrants transiting Tunisia would try to stay there and “conquer” the country.
