He was taken into custody on Thursday for satirical drawings depicting the Prime Minister of Tunisia, Ahmed Hachani. Tunisian cartoonist Tawfik Omrane was released on Friday.
“My father must appear on September 25 before the court of first instance of Tunis,” his daughter Aya told AFP.
Arrested on Thursday, the 64-year-old cartoonist was questioned by the police for three hours about two caricatures published in early August on his “Omrane Cartoons” page. He criticized the choice of Ahmed Hachani as head of government, according to his lawyer, Ayachi Hammami. The prosecutor at the Ben Arous court, south of Tunis, then placed him in police custody.
The Prime Minister assures that he has “nothing to do” with this arrest
“This is another violation of freedom of expression which this time affects a great cartoonist,” lamented his lawyer, himself a fierce opponent of the policies of President Kais Saied.
The Tunisian Prime Minister affirmed in a press release released by his services that he had “nothing to do” with the arrest of the cartoonist, adding that he had learned about it “through the media”.
He judged that his arrest would be “unjustified” if it was linked to his caricatures, affirming that Tawfik Omrane could have been heard in the context of a “bad check” case.
Regression of freedoms
The arrest of Tawfik Omrane, who became known from the 1980s through his political press cartoons, was strongly criticized on social networks, particularly by figures from civil society.
In a press release on Friday, the National Union of Tunisian Journalists (SNJT) denounced the “repression of the government and the arrest of the cartoonist” which “damage the image of Tunisia”.
The SNJT, as well as other local and international NGOs, have deplored a decline in freedoms in the country since President Saied assumed full powers on July 25, 2021.
These NGOs also protested against the “intimidation” of journalists through legal proceedings and “purely political” arrests.