Cyber-dissident Zouhair Yahyaoui ends hunger strike, another journalist continues

Reporters Without Borders called today for the immediate release of jailed cyber-dissident Zouhair Yahyaoui, who ended a two-week hunger strike on 30 January, and another journalist, Hamadi Jebali, who is continuing his. Jebali, who has spent nearly 12 years in prison and is publisher of the weekly Al Fajr, organ of the An Nahada Islamist militant movement, began a hunger strike on 13 January to protest against his conditions of detention. He is in prison in the northern town of Bizerte and has heart problems. Despite growing appeals in both Tunisia and abroad, the government has refused to release the two journalists. Reporters Without Borders deplored the fact that Tunisians had to resort to hunger strikes and risk their lives in an effort to have their rights respected. It cited two other recent cases involving Taoufik ben Brik and lawyer Radhia Nasraoui. Yahyaoui, founder of the website TUNeZINE (www.tunezine.com), began his hunger strike on 17 January, to protest against his bad conditions of detention since being jailed on 4 June last year after being arrested by plainclothes police in a Tunis cybercafé. He was sentenced to two years in prison for "spreading false news" by the appeals court in Tunis on 10 July. His family said after visiting him on 27 January that he was in a bad way, with constant headaches and a tooth infection, and had not been given proper medicine despite repeated requests. He is in a cell with 100 other prisoners at Borj el-Amri prison, 30 km from Tunis. During his interrogation, he was tortured with three sessions of being made to hang by him arms with feet barely touching the ground. Yahyaoui, who uses the pseudonym "Ettounsi" ("Tunisian"), set up his website in July 2001 to put out news about the fight for democracy and freedom in Tunisia. He published opposition material on it and was the first one to circulate a letter from his uncle, Judge Mokhtar Yahyaoui to President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali criticising the country's legal system. Jebali has been held since 1991 and was sentenced in 1992 by the Tunis military court to 16 years in prison for "aggressively intending to change the nature of the state" and belonging to an illegal organisation. The previous year, he had been given a one-year sentence for publishing an article criticising the system of military courts. His family said recently that their home in the southwestern town of Sousse was being watched and that their visitors were questioned by plainclothes police.