Tunisia commutes sentence of couple guilty of public indecency

The Tunisian High Court has reduced the sentence of an Algerian man and a Tunisian girl after they were accused of public indecency, stripping and hugging in the street.

According to the BBC, the Court of Appeal in Tunis sentenced the young man to four months in jail, instead of four months and a half, for “public indecency and refusing to obey the police”, while the girl was sentenced to two months, instead of three, for the first charge.

The first verdict, issued on 4 October, was met with anger on social media and in the press.

Spokesman for the General Prosecutor in Tunis told AFP that “the verdict is independent and what was reported by local and global press is wrong… they were not arrested because they were kissing, but because they were naked.”

At the hearing, the girl was weeping when the head of the court read the police report, which indicated that the two were involved in a sexual act when they were arrested on 1 October in a suburb in Tunis.

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The girl said that her boyfriend was only hugging her when police officers wearing civilian clothing stopped them and forced them to leave the car.

The man said he had tried to photograph the police officers in order to file a complaint against them.

The case sparked controversy in Tunisia over public morality and police behaviour, and nearly ten lawyers proposed to defend the two for free.

The defence cited a number of flaws in the case, including the management of the sessions in Arabic, a language that the French-Algerian young man doesn’t speak.

“It is normal for him to react when his basic rights are violated,” said lawyer Ghazi Marabit, after his client was accused of terrorising the police.

Some politicians have accused the authorities of “confiscating freedoms and insulting the image of the country.” The newspaper Le Maghreb published a picture of former president Habib Bourguiba kissing his wife, criticising the judiciary’s view of “kissing” as an offence.