An Islamist journalist released in June after serving an 11-year prison term has been re-arrested and sentenced to eight months for violating the terms of his release, a civil liberties organization said Saturday.
The Tunisian Civil Liberties Council (CNLT) said Abdallah Zouari, aged 46, of the newspaper Al Fajr had been sent back to jail on Friday in what it called a case of "political persecution".
Reacting to the publicity surrounding Zouari's re-arrest a government source said Zouari "was not a journalist but a terrorist", AFP reported. "The author of a number of tracts in the intergrationalist Al Fajr newspaper during the short period it was published Abdallah Zourai cannot be called a journalist," said a Tunisian government statement.
"He has never held a press card or worked as a journalist in Tunisia and to speak of the condemnation of a journalist is a gross distortion of the evidence," the statement added. It said that Zouari was, "above all one of the leaders of the terrorist organization Ennahda and he is implicated in the terrorist activities of this organization".
Zouari was reportedly fighting an interior ministry order stipulating that he reside in the southeast of the country while his family live in Tunis in the northeast at the time of his re-arrest. His lawyers are appealing the sentence.
The CNLT condemned what it called an "exceptionally severe verdict" and said Zouari did not get a fair hearing under international standards. It stated the case "is one of political persecution of opponents like Mr. Zouari, who has just served 11 years for his opinions".
The human rights watchdog Amnesty International has said that an estimated 1,000 prisoners of conscience are serving time in Tunisian jails. The majority of them are believed to members of the banned Islamist movement, Ennahda.
(Albawaba.com)
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