Tunis, Tunisia – Distinguished Tunisian columnist Haythem El Mekki and radio cohost Elyes Gharbi have been launched by a public prosecutor after being interrogated about their feedback on the nation’s highly effective safety forces.

On Monday, the 2 journalists have been questioned at a police station within the space of El Gorjani within the capital Tunis as their colleagues and human rights activists protested exterior.

No date has but been set for his or her subsequent look. Neither have any prices towards them been confirmed. In the intervening time, each males stay at liberty on bail, pending additional prices and a possible trial.

The case pertains to a grievance filed by one among Tunisia’s highly effective safety unions over feedback made by El Mekki on Might 15 on Gharbi’s Midi Present on Mosaique FM radio.

El Mekki criticised police recruitment strategies following the killing of six individuals, together with two pilgrims, at El Ghriba Synagogue on the island of Djerba by a serving Nationwide Guardsman earlier in Might.

The privately owned Mosaique FM is amongst Tunisia’s most listened-to stations, and the Midi Present is very widespread amongst its 1.5 million listeners.

“The Midi Present is likely one of the final radio programmes to voice and host opposition figures,” stated activist Nessryne Jelalia, who, together with round 100 journalists and rights campaigners, had gathered exterior the police barracks in Tunis the place El Mekki and Gharbi have been being questioned.

Silencing dissent

Jelalia stated El Mekki’s first brush with nationwide prominence was about 30 years in the past this month by means of his involvement in an anti-censorship marketing campaign – and now he finds himself topic to prosecution on freedom of speech prices. Of all the web Tunisian bloggers whose exercise helped deliver across the nation’s revolution, El Mekki is the one one remaining.

Individuals pay attention to listen to him converse, she stated, “in regards to the political scenario, in regards to the information, and his supply attracts actually giant audiences. He’s one of many only a few we now have.”

Jelalia praised El Mekki’s function as a satirist of contemporary political mores.

Monday’s listening to was the most recent in a rising variety of prosecutions undertaken by President Kais Saied and his allies.

Following the arrests of Saied’s political opponents and critics has been an unparallelled clampdown on dissent throughout the media and, it seems, particularly throughout the unbiased radio station the place El Mekki works, Mosaique FM.

In early February, the station’s Director-Basic Noureddine Boutar was arrested and later charged with cash laundering. Nevertheless, in keeping with his attorneys, the station’s “editorial line” and the Midi Present particularly additionally featured prominently throughout questioning.

Final week, one of many station’s regional correspondents, Khalifa Guesmi, was sentenced to 5 years of imprisonment after refusing to reveal his sources for a safety story he had written.

Questions over the station’s future circulated extensively among the many crowd gathered exterior the police barracks.

“I feel President Saied may be very irritated by the Midi Present and has been focusing on this radio station for some months,” El Mekki’s brother, Thameur, the editor-in-chief of the main unbiased media platform Nawaat, stated. “Mosaique FM is likely one of the final free areas within the mainstream media inside Tunisia.

“By attacking two such widespread figures [El Mekki and Gharbi] you’re in the end going to face the road,” Thameur stated, gesturing across the crowd, “Look, if we will get this many individuals inside 24 hours, assume what we will do with weeks.”

For El Mekki at the very least, this newest conflict with the safety companies comes after a sequence of previous confrontations with authorities.

Rising because the nameless blogger Bylasko, El Mekki started his clandestine profession by taking fierce purpose at censorship beneath longtime President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

“I’ve been focused every day and on an enormous degree for the reason that revolution,” El Mekki advised Al Jazeera in a current interview.

“I feel the system is likely to be utilizing me as a [tool],” he had stated, describing how authorities may use his freedom to say they have been defending press freedom. “They’re attempting to show it’s not a dictatorship,” he defined. “The supporters of the president take a look at me and say, ‘You name him a dictator however you’re nonetheless free. How can he be a dictator?’”