The Tunisia Monitoring Group (TMG), a coalition of 18 member organisations of the International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX) network, urges the Tunisian government to release journalist Slim Boukhdhir and turn for good the page of settling scores with critical reporters and dissidents. The TMG has requested lawyer Mohamed Abbou to observe the trial on its behalf. Abbou, a former prisoner of opinion released in July, is a member of Boukhdir's legal team.

Boukhdhir is due to appear on Friday 18 January before a court of appeal in the suburbs of Sfax, Tunisia's second largest city. His lawyers are challenging an unfair court decision that sent him to prison for one year on 4 December allegedly for "assaulting a government employee in the exercise of his duty" and "breach of decent behavior."

Boukhdhir's lawyers, as well as representatives of local and international human rights groups who observed the trial, denounced judicial procedural flaws and reported that his main crime was apparently his critical articles for international media and news websites, blocked locally, on President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and the first lady's family.

His arrest occurred on 26 November in Sfax, while on his way to Tunis for a scheduled meeting with a police officer handling his application for a new passport. Boukhdir went on hunger strike in November and December respectively to protest the Tunisian authorities' denial to issue his passport and to protest the squalid prison conditions and harassment by prison guards and inmates.

"The Tunisian government should stop using the judicial system to silence and punish its critics. We are deeply disturbed by the results of academic research showing that there was more tolerance for freedom of expression and association under the French occupation more than 50 years ago than under President Ben Ali's rule," said Rohan Jayasekera of Index on Censorship, TMG chair.

Professor Mohamed Talbi, former dean of the Faculty of Arts in Tunis and currently head of the Tunis-based IFEX member, the Observatory for Press Freedom, Publishing and Creation (OLPEC) was among prominent Tunisian and international researchers who came to this rather saddening conclusion.

TMG has conducted a series of fact-finding missions in Tunisia since January 2005 and issued four reports and several alerts about the Tunisian government's unrelenting attacks on freedom of association and expression and determination to ban or cripple independent groups and silence dissidents and critical journalists.

"We call on the Tunisian government to immediately release Slim Boukhdhir, who has done nothing wrong to be abruptly and unfairly thrown into a squalid prison cell away from his wife and two small children," said Jayasekera.

Members of the IFEX-TMG:

Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (HRINFO), Egypt

ARTICLE 19, United Kingdom

Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE), Canada

Cartoonists Rights Network (CRN), United States

Egyptian Organization for Human Rights (EOHR), Egypt

Index on Censorship, United Kingdom

International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), Belgium

International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), Netherlands

International Press Institute (IPI), Austria

International Publishers' Association (IPA), Switzerland

Journaliste en danger (JED), Democratic Republic of Congo

Maharat Foundation, Lebanon

Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA), Namibia

Norwegian PEN, Norway

World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC), Canada

World Association of Newspapers (WAN), France

World Press Freedom Committee (WPFC), United States

Writers in Prison Committee of International PEN (WiPC), United Kingdom