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Mr. Ben Hassine fled Tunisia following a wave of arrests of student movement militants in 1987. He was then sentenced in absentia by the Tunis military tribunal to two years’ imprisonment for his participation in Tunisian student protests.
At first he took refuge in Morocco, where he had pursued his university studies at Oujda’s law faculty; then he got married and left the country to seek asylum in the United Kingdom.
He was arrested in Turkey in February 2003 and extradited to Tunisia the same year. Brought before the Tunis military tribunal, a special court, he was sentenced – after a manifestly unfair trial, according to his lawyer – to 46 years of criminal imprisonment.
He has been detained ever since, in, according to his family, extremely difficult conditions and has been subjected to a special detention regime: he is kept in a cell of 4 square metres, without hygiene, ventilation or natural light.
His wife and children have received only three letters from him since he was jailed in 2003 and have not had any news about him except occasionally via his mother and sister, who are permitted to visit him for one hour every Saturday.
At his visit of 23 June 2007, the jail authorities told his parents that he had refused their visit. They had been warned beforehand that he would never refuse any visit for any reason and that any excuse for preventing his family from seeing him that the administration might invoke would be unfounded.
In the following week, on 30 June, his mother was permitted to see him after insisting and she observed that there were traces of blows on his face and that he was in a weakened state. As he started to tell her about his health, the visit, which took place in the presence of an officer and two guards, was interrupted after two minutes and he was violently dragged out. His last cry was “Somebody help me!”
Mr. Ben Hassine has on numerous occasions undergone torture and mistreatment in prison for protesting his inhumane detention conditions. Today he is isolated from the outside world, and his family fears for his life and his physical health.
In light of all this – and recalling that Tunisia has ratified the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights – Alkarama calls upon the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights to intervene with the Tunisian authorities to put an end to the mistreatment and torture that Mr. Ben Hassine is being subjected to, to provide him with humane detention conditions, to allow him to defend himself against the charges, and to allow him to write to and receive mail from his wife and children living in the United Kingdom.