51-Year-Old Man Insults Tunisian President On Facebook Sentenced To Death

Illustration. Death penalty execution room. (Unsplash-Johannes Blinke)

JAKARTA - A 51-year-old man was sentenced to death in a case of insulting Facebook against Tunisian President Kais Saied.

Citing AP, the Court in Tunisia also considers the convict's upload named Saber Chouchen on social media (medsos) to threaten state security.

Saber's attorney, Oussama Bouthelja, said on Friday local time that his client was found guilty on Wednesday on three counts: attempted to overthrow the country, insult the president, and spread false information online.

The judge said the post sparked violence and chaos and violated Tunisia's criminal law and the controversial cybercrime law in 2022, Decree 54.

The death penalty was Tunisia's first, in which dozens of people have been sentenced to severe prison terms on similar charges since Saied seized power from the Tunisian government in July 2021.

The death penalty is indeed found in Tunisian criminal law and criminal courts sometimes impose the death penalty on criminals, but have never been carried out since the execution of a serial killer in 1991.

In a statement on Facebook, Saber's attorney said his client had been in pretrial custody since January 2024.

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He added that the defendant Saber Chouchen was the father of three children and a casual daily laborer who suffered permanent defects due to a work accident.

Legal counsel described her client as a socially vulnerable person and has a low educational background, with a small influence in cyberspace.

Most of the content he shares is copied from other pages, and some posts don't get a response at all, wrote his attorney on Facebook.

"In court, he said the goal was to attract the attention of the authorities to their difficult living conditions, not to incite riots," he continued.

The death penalty verdict is the latest Tunisian Court ruling using Decree 54, a law that prohibits "production, spread, spread, delivery, or writing false news ... with the aim of violating other people's rights, endangering public safety or national defense, or spreading terror among residents."

Since being passed in 2022, journalists and human rights groups have denounced Decree 54 or the law as the main tool used by authorities to curb freedom of expression in Tunisia.

Tunisia, the birthplace of the 2011 Arab Spring insurgency, has long been seen as the last beacon of hope for democracy in the Middle East and North Africa.

However, since Saied frozen parliament and consolidated his own power in 2021, political freedom in Tunisia has shrunk. Saied continued to rule with decrees and those who criticized him were imprisoned.