A senior judge in Tunisia has been arrested without charge, lawyers, fellow judges and activists have revealed. The wife of Judge Hammadi Rahmani was assaulted during his arrest, and her phone was seized by the security authorities. No official reason has been provided for his arrest.
However, former Tunisian diplomat Abdelwaheb El-Hani suggested on Facebook that it could have something to do with Rahmani’s social media post about the “miserable situation” of the “National Company of Oil Distribution” and the “deterioration of services” on the country’s highways. “This is in addition to his daily articles under the headline ‘The President’s Judiciary’ about the decline in judicial independence since the dissolution of the elected Supreme Council of the Sharia Judiciary, the unjust and aggressive dismissal of 57 judges, and the refusal to implement fair administrative judiciary rulings against them, based on mostly malicious denunciations by those whom the President of the Republic calls ‘authorised parties’.”
Expressing full solidarity with Judge Rahmani, his wife and the independent judges, El-Hani added: “This situation reeks of corruption.”
Other lawyers added their expressions of solidarity with Judge Rahmani. Murad Masoudi called him a “brave and strong man” who works together with others in “solidarity… to end injustice.” According to lawyer Enas Al-Harath, the situation in Tunisia is a “miserable reality reaching the point of offensiveness, due to the arbitrariness, injustice and destruction.” She said that it was, “A moment of indescribable shame for every free person for Judge Hammadi Rahmani to be brought to court in handcuffs and to cross the hall shouting alone in terrible silence, ‘Freedoms… Freedoms’.”
The Director of the Geneva Centre for Democracy and Human Rights told Arabi21, “Judge Rahmani was arrested without charge and dismissed arbitrarily, but the court’s ruling to reinstate him has not been carried out by the authorities.” This is a “very dangerous” development, added Anouar Gharbi. “This is a man known for his defence of the state’s legal institutions. The audacity shown towards Judge Rahmani, is another case of the judiciary being targeted in Tunisia. I have said repeatedly that targeting the judicial institution does not serve anyone and is a blow to the state. If the judiciary collapses, everything collapses. Judge Rahmani is a prominent symbol of the honest judiciary in Tunisia.”
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