Reporters Without Borders calls for full investigation into assault on Sihem Bensedrine

Reporters Without Borders has called for a full investigation into an assault on the journalist and human rights activist Sihem Bensedrine. She was attacked on 5 January as she left her home to go to an Internet café. She was accosted by three men of whom the youngest, who was unknown to her, tripped her up and then beat and insulted her. The other two who intervened only afterwards told her, "don't pay attention to the actions of this young delinquent". Suffering from bruising, the journalist had her injuries examined by a doctor the following day and asked her lawyer to officially complain about the incident.Bensedrine was summoned by the police on 8 January to be confronted by a simple-minded local man whom she had known for a long time and on whom, according to her husband, they were trying to pin the blame for the attack.Bensedrine herself was adamant, "The political police are behind this assault." "This kind of intimidation is unacceptable as is the response of the Tunisian authorities when they blandly say there are no political police in Tunisia!" said Robert Ménard, secretary general of Reporters Without Borders. "It is not April Fool's Day." He said that if Bensedrine had not yet made a complaint it was only because a lawyers' collective was organising itself to prepare her statement of evidence for the prosecutor's office.