NGO: ‘Torture is making a comeback in Tunisia’

“Torture is making a comeback in Tunisia,” according to the vice-president of the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT).

Mokhtar Trifi expressed his concern on the sharp rise in torture cases in Tunisia recently and denounced the fact that those who practice torture have never been brought to justice.

According to Trifi, hundreds of cases are coming to court every day to report abuses, violence and ill-treatment but none have led to a trial and no torturer has been convicted.

Torture has been prevalent in prisons and in detention centres to extract confessions from detainees but is also common in streets where hard-handedness from authorities is considered torture by the organisation.

Despite steps to steer the country towards democracy, Tunisian security forces have been culpable of adopting torture as a tactic against terror suspects including arbitrary arrests, detentions and harassment of suspects’ family members.

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To limit the use of torture, the vice-president of OMCT stressed the need to train, supervise and educate security officers on human rights issues and called on establishments to call out perpetrators of the crimes.

Trifi also called for stricter measures and punishments for those who practice torture. “Torture is a crime that must be punished with six to eight years in prison,” he explained.

The proposals by OMCT were presented to the Head of Government Youssef Chahed and to the President of the Republic Béji Caïd Essebsi at a meeting held this week with the OMCT delegation.

However Tunisia has begun to take human rights more seriously since the country’s revolution in 2011 that ousted long-time leader Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

The creation of the National Institution for the Prevention of Torture (INPT), the only one in the Arab world, has been an important step forward in pushing for amendments and laws to improve the conditions of detention.

“Certainly, large countries still resort to violence and torture, but Tunisia must not follow their example,” Trifi said.