Reuters ZOUBEIR SOUISSI
Activists and lawyers said that a Tunisian judge on Thursday sentenced activist Rania al-Amdouni to six months in prison on charges of assaulting morals, after a dispute with police officers.
Rania Al-Amdouni (26 years) is a defender of human and women’s rights and has participated in most of the protests calling for social and economic justice and against police violence over the past two months.
On the tenth anniversary of the revolution last January, violent protests erupted at night. But daytime protests focused on demands for the release of detainees and on police violence.
Activist Asrar Ben Jouira told Reuters that “Rania was sentenced to prison after harassment by police officers who were provoking her,” adding that “Rania was accused of insulting good morals and drunkenness.”
She indicated that she went to complain to the police, but they refused to accept her complaint, and she became an accuser.
Rania said last month to “Reuters” that she “suffers from harassment and persecution by policemen sitting in front of her house, which forced her to sleep outside the house.”
“Rania’s case clearly reveals that individual and collective freedoms have become threatened a decade after the revolution. They are missing the way,” human rights activist and lawyer Saida Karash told the same agency.
Police arrested more than 1,600 people during the protests, and dozens of them complained of ill-treatment and sometimes torture.
The Tunisian authorities rejected the accusations and said that the police had performed well.
Tunisia suffers from economic and social problems that have become the cause of continuous protests a decade after the revolution that granted Tunisians freedom of expression, demonstration and criticism of their rulers.
Source: “Reuters”
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