Published On 27/11/2025
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Last update: 20:07 (Mecca time)
Today, Thursday, the Tunisian authorities decided to conditionally release lawyer and media personality Sania Dahmani after spending a year and a half in prison on several charges, most notably mocking President Kais Saied.
The official Tunisian News Agency quoted an informed source as saying that a decision was issued today by the Minister of Justice, Leila Jaffal, to conditionally release Sania Dahmani. After serving a year and a half of the total sentences, she reached 4 years.
Agence France-Presse quoted her lawyer, Sami Bin Ghazi, as saying that Al-Dahmani “was able to return to her home,” but she is still under judicial supervision.
According to some media outlets, she was released after a medical examination revealed a deterioration in her health, with diabetes, high blood pressure, and thyroid problems.
Al-Dahmani received support from French bar associations and many international organizations. The European Parliament also adopted a resolution in which representatives expressed their “deep concern about the deterioration of the rule of law and fundamental freedoms in Tunisia,” referring to the case of Sunia Dahmani. The European representatives condemned her “arbitrary detention, the judicial harassment to which she is subjected” and “the conditions of her detention.”
The representatives demanded “the immediate and unconditional release of her and all other detainees” based on their opinions. Parliament also called on Tunisia to repeal Presidential Decree No. 54, “which has become a tool for interference in basic freedoms.”
Several issues
Al-Dahmani, who was prosecuted in a number of cases due to statements made on radio and television programs criticizing racism in Tunisia, was convicted at least 3 times in recent months.
On May 11, 2024, masked police officers arrested Al-Dahmani (60 years old), one of the Tunisian president’s staunchest opponents, during a live broadcast in front of cameras inside the “Lawyer’s House” affiliated with the Deanship of Lawyers in the capital, Tunis.
In September 2024, the judiciary sentenced Al-Dahmani to 8 months in prison on the grounds that she made sarcastic statements about Saeed’s speech about irregular immigrants in the country, according to her lawyer, Samir Dilo.
On January 22, 2025, she was sentenced to one and a half years in prison in a case related to racism.
On the first of last July, a Tunisian court issued a two-year prison sentence against Al-Dahmani on the basis of statements related to irregular immigrants, according to its defense.
The Tunisian president says that the judicial system is independent and that he does not interfere in its work, while the opposition accuses him of using the judiciary to prosecute those who reject the exceptional measures he imposed on July 25, 2021.
Among these measures are the dissolution of the Judicial and Parliament, issuing legislation by presidential orders, approving a new constitution through a popular referendum, and holding early legislative elections.
Political forces consider these measures a coup against the Revolutionary Constitution (2014) and the consecration of absolute individual rule, while other forces supporting Saied see them as a correction of the course of the 2011 revolution, which overthrew then President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.