
Mary Lawlor, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, has condemned the 18-month prison sentence handed down to lawyer and columnist Sonia Dahmani by the Court of Appeal of Tunis. In a Facebook post on Tuesday, April 14, 2026, Lawlor expressed disappointment, calling the judgment "unjustifiable" despite being a reduced sentence. She highlighted that Dahmani had only been released four months prior after 18 months in deplorable detention conditions and urged Tunisian authorities to drop all charges related to her peaceful human rights work. Lawlor also called on Tunisia's Permanent Mission in Geneva to review its position on the case. This stance comes amid recurring criticism from international organizations regarding the use of legal provisions related to information systems to prosecute civil society actors, journalists, and lawyers for public statements. Dahmani's conviction stems from statements she made as a columnist discussing racial discrimination in Tunisia, which authorities reclassified as the dissemination of false information under Article 24 of Decree-Law No. 54 concerning offenses related to information and communication systems. Her judicial file includes multiple charges under the same decree-law, with her initial arrest on May 11, 2024, leading to several detention warrants before she was granted conditional release on November 27, 2025, by a decision from the Minister of Justice.
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This summary was AI-generated from a story originally published by Business News.