Tunis, July 8, 2007

Omar Mestiri, editor of the on-line journal Kalima has been summoned to appear in court on August 2, 2007 on charges of defamation brought by Mohamed Baccar under articles 42, 50, 53, 72 and 78 of the Press Code.

The charges arise from an  article (http://www.kalimatunisie.com/article.php?id=289 ) published on September 5, 2006 in Kalima which gave information about the surprising rehabilitation of Baccar, a lawyer close to those in power, who was  disbarred for having been convicted on several counts of  perjury and fraud .

Mestiri was first  questioned on March 29 by the public prosecutor, whose line of interrogation was focused on the identity of the sources who gave him information about the rehabilitation, and not on the veracity of the supposedly defamatory facts reported in the article, which are very familiar to the Tunisian public. What most concerned the prosecutor was how Omar Mestiri was able to learn about the rehabilitation, about which the authorities had been very discreet. Omar Mestiri refused to answer, on the basis of his right as a journalist to protect his sources. Mestiri’s lawyers have raised quesitons about the judicial basis for his prosecution, given that Kalima is blocked in Tunisia and the publication could not therefore have caused harm in Tunisia.

Mestiri faces a sentence of one to three years in prison.

OLPEC (the Observatory for the Freedom of Press, Publishing and Creation in Tunisia), which believes that in fact Mestiri’s legal difficulties arise from articles he published during the same period about corruption in the Tunisian president’s family :

·         Demands that the charges be dropped, considering that Mestiri did no more than exercise his profession as a journalist.

·         Demands the repeal of the provisions of the law that allow for imprisonment in cases of crimes of the press.

·         Demands an end to the arbitrary censorship which still blocks the site of Kalima, depriving it of its right to publish in Tunisia.

On behalf of the Observatory

Naziha Rjiba, Vice President