Hamma Hammami jailed for three years

Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontières - RSF) said today it was appalled at the three years and two months jail sentence for subversion passed on Hamma Hammami, publisher of the Tunisian Communist Workers' Party (PCOT) newspaper El Badil, calling it "further evidence of the determination of President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali's regime to muzzle the press." RSF secretary-general Robert Ménard noted that "imprisonment for expressing opinions is the trademark of authoritarian regimes." The sentence, passed by a Tunis appeals court during the night of 30-31 March, was a reduction of an earlier nine-year one announced at a trial in absentia on 14 July 1999, at which two associates, Abdeljabar Maduri and Samir Tâamallah, were also convicted of subversion in their absence, receiving sentences of three years and nine months and one year and nine months respectively. The charges against the three men concerned their membership of the PCOT, of which Hammami is leader, and accused them of running an illegal organisation, handing out leaflets, spreading false news, holding illegal meetings and inciting rebellion and lawbreaking. Hammami told the court: "I'm a founder-member of the PCOT. That's not a crime. I was simply exercising my rights. I'm not a criminal. I favour the rule of law." His lawyers will appeal the case further.