A Tunisian court has sentenced a 51-year-old man to death for Facebook posts deemed offensive to President Kais Saied and a threat to state security, his lawyer confirmed on Friday.
The defendant, who remains unnamed, was convicted on Wednesday of three charges: attempting to overthrow the state, insulting the president, and spreading false information online.
Judges stated the posts incited violence and chaos, violating Tunisia’s penal code and the controversial 2022 cybercrime law, Decree 54. This ruling marks the first death sentence of its kind in Tunisia, where dozens have received heavy prison sentences for similar charges since President Saied seized all branches of government in July 2021.
While capital punishment remains in Tunisia’s penal code and civilian courts occasionally issue death sentences, none have been carried out since a serial killer was executed in 1991.
In a statement on Facebook, lawyer Oussama Bouthelja said that his client had been in pretrial detention since January 2024. He said the father of three is an occasional day laborer and suffers from a permanent disability caused by a workplace accident.
Bouthelja described him as socially vulnerable and of a limited educational background, with little influence online.
“Most of the content he shared was copied from other pages, and some posts received no engagement at all,” Bouthelja wrote. “In court, he said his intent was to draw authorities’ attention to his difficult living conditions, not to incite unrest.”
The ruling is the latest to use Decree 54, a law that makes it illegal “to produce, spread, disseminate, send or write false news … with the aim of infringing the rights of others, harming public safety or national defense or sowing terror among the population.” Since its passage in 2022, journalists and human rights groups have condemned the law as a key tool used by authorities to curb freedom of expression in Tunisia.
Tunisia, the birthplace of the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings, was long seen as the last beacon of hope for democracy in the Middle East and North Africa. However, since Saied suspended parliament and consolidated his own power in 2021, political freedoms have shrunk. Saied continues to rule by decree and his most well-known critics are either in prison or abroad.
Rights advocates in Tunisia warned that applying the death penalty for online speech sets a dangerous precedent.
