Tunisia Journalist Held for Comments on Egg-Throwing Case

A Tunisian journalist was detained Friday for accusing the public prosecutor of fabricating evidence implicating a cameraman in an egg-throwing attack on a minister, a case stoking fears about curbs on free speech.

"The committal order was given even before our statements and the questioning of Zied el-Heni... This detention is illegal," the journalist's lawyer Moufida Belghrith told Agence France Presse, after he was summoned to the central courthouse in Tunis.

Several dozen journalists and lawyers prevented police from executing the order, by blocking access to the judge's office.

But the security forces finally managed to detain Heni, who was led away in a police convoy, amid the shouts of protesters.

The journalist is charged with accusing the public prosecutor, on television late last month, of having fabricated evidence against cameraman Mourad Meherzi, who is on trial for complicity in the egg attack on Culture Minister Mehdi Mabrouk.

Meherzi, who spent three weeks in detention before being freed on bail last week, insists he was merely doing his job in shooting the incident, with Nasreddine Shili, the filmmaker who hurled the egg, vouching for him.

The minister's lawyer acknowledged last week that Meherzi was only doing his job, being at the scene of the incident, but the cameraman is still on trial and Shili remains in custody.

Just hours after his arrest, Heni renewed his accusations, despite the risk of being jailed.

"I am going to present to the judge two documents which prove what I have declared about the allegations of the public prosecutor Tarek Chkioua," he said on his Facebook page.

"Chkioua argued... that the detention of my colleague Mourad Meherzi was decided on the basis of confessions about his involvement in a plot to attack the minister of culture," Heni added.

"There is no proof. On the contrary, (Meherzi) has even refused to sign the statement (following his interrogation)... I will ask that Tarek Chkioua is tried for placing someone in detention without any legal basis."

Heni was a fierce critic of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, Tunisia's former strongman toppled in Tunisia's mass uprising in January 2011 that unleashed the Arab Spring. But he was never imprisoned, despite constant police harassment.

Since the revolution, the former official with the Tunisian journalists union has regularly accuse the Islamist party Ennahda, which heads the coalition government, of manipulating the courts and the security forces for political purposes.

Tunisia's powerful UGTT workers union on Friday strongly criticized attacks on the freedom of expression.

"(UGTT leader Houcine) Abassi expresses his astonishment over the successive trials of journalists and voices his concern. This sector is unable to evolve in light of these attempts to make it submit," the UGTT said.

Human Rights Watch has also slammed the government over the prosecution of journalists "for expressing their opinions," citing the case of Heni and another journalist, Zouhaer al-Jiss.

Since early 2012, HRW said the authorities have used the same "repressive legal arsenal" to stifle free speech that were employed by the Ben Ali regime, and that "numerous journalists, bloggers, artists, and intellectuals have been prosecuted.

The attack on the culture minister took place at a memorial ceremony on August 16 to mark 40 days since the death of a fellow artist, with Meherzi filming the attack and the images subsequently broadcast by Astrolab TV, for whom he was working.

The act was reportedly in protest at the inadequate response by the minister, an independent in the Islamist-led coalition government, to attacks on artists by extremists who deem their work offensive.