Tunisian Blogger Sentenced to Year in Prison
By Curt on Dec 5, 2007 in Slim Boukhdhir, Tunisia, Imprisoned bloggers
Update: CPJ reports that Boukhdhir’s sentence was upheld by the court of appeals in Sfax.
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According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (no relation), blogger and journalist Slim Boukhdhir, who was arrested on November 27, has been sentenced by the Tunisian authorities to one year in prison.
A court in Sakiet Ezziet, in the suburbs of Sfax, Tunisia’s second-largest city after Tunis, sentenced Slim Boukhdhir, a well-known blogger and contributor to the London-based Al-Quds al-Arabi to eight months for verbally assaulting a public employee while on duty and four months for violating public decency both crimes under Tunisia’s Penal Code. Boukhdhir was also fined, under the 1993 national identity card law, 5 Tunisian dinars (the equivalent of US$4) for “refusing to show his identification card to a public security agent.”
Verbal assault? That’s a new one.
