Lawyer's trial slated as a "mockery"

Reporters Without Borders condemned a "mockery of a trial" in which a lawyer was found guilty of posting "false news" on the Internet and urged democratic countries to boycott the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Tunis in November 2005 unless Tunisia ended its Internet crackdown and released him. Mohammed Abbu was sentenced overnight on 28-29 April to three years and six months in prison "at the end of a trial that trampled on the most elementary rules of law," said the worldwide press freedom organisation. "The charges against him were baseless. He was really punished for having used the Internet to criticise government corruption," it said. "In a cruel irony, he will be in prison when the WSIS opens in Tunis, in November 2005 - a conference on the circulation of news and information on the Net." Abbu, who was arrested on 1st March 2005, was sentenced to two years in prison for supposedly physically attacking a colleague at a conference in 2002 and 18 months for posting an article on the website Tunisnews in August 2004 in which he compared torture in Tunisia to US soldiers' abuses of prisoners in Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison. Many observers at the trial said they believed his conviction was really connected with another article posted on the Internet shortly before his arrest, in which he criticised Tunisia's invitation to Israel's prime minister Ariel Sharon to attend the WSIS and, using irony, exposed corruption among the president's family. One of Abbu's lawyers described him as the "personal hostage of (Tunisian president) Ben Ali". Abbu's lawyers had refused to enter a plea on the assault charge, which they were notified of only days before the case was due to open. Lawyer and human rights activist Radhia Nasrawi said, "There was no concrete evidence to back up the charge, apart from an unsigned medical certificate which has no legal standing. A number of witnesses would have been able to testify that no assault was committed during this conference in 2002," she added.