Profile: Mourad Zeghidi, jailed in Tunisia for being a committed journalist

Mourad Zeghidistarted out as a sports journalist in 1992 on Canal Horizons, a television channel that is part of the Canal+ group in Tunisia, and later on Canal+in France, but he reinvented himself as a leading political voice in the wake of Tunisia's revolution in 2011. After several years in France, he returned to Tunisia in 2014 and chose political journalism in a country undergoing a democratic transition and yearning for a free press. His analyses were admired for their depth, sobriety and measured approach, earning him a big audience and a reputation for independence.

Fifteen years after the 2011 revolution, the spaces for free speech in Tunisia are now closing one by one and Mourad Zeghidi, who will turn 54 in May, is paying for his commitment with his freedom. In a media landscape riddled with disinformation and propaganda, he continues to embody a journalism based on fact checking, balance and rigour.

He, his Radio IFMcolleague Borhen Bsaies, and the lawyer and columnist Sonia Dahmani were arrested on 11 May 2024 in the wake of a crackdown, and the show they hosted, "L'Émission Impossible" (The Impossible Broadcast), one of the most popular programmes in Tunisia, was cancelled for good as a result of their arrest.

He and his colleagues were charged with "spreading fake news" and "making false statements with the intent to defame others" under Decree-Law 54, a law that Reporters Without Borders (RSF) regards as an instrument of repression. His only crime was voicing solidarity with an imprisoned colleague, Mohamed Boughalleb, a political commentator for the privately-owned radio station Cap FM, and commenting on political and social developments. Some of his posts cited by the prosecution were more than three years old and therefore disqualified under the statute of limitations, his lawyers said.

Mourad Zeghidi stood his ground before the judge. "I take responsibility," he said, insisting that he had simply done his job. This phrase ("J'assume" in French) has become the rallying cry of those demanding his release. The son of a long-time opponent of two former presidents, Habib Bourguiba and Zine el Abidine Ben Ali, and the grandson of an anti-colonial activist, both of whom were imprisoned, he knows the price of civic resistance.

Judicial persecution

But the judicial persecution did not stop there. After being sentenced to a year in prison - reduced to eight months on appeal in July 2024 - he should have been released in January 2025. But a second case caught up with him a month before his release, when he was charged with "money laundering" and "tax evasion" under anti-terrorism legislation. On 3 December 2024, his case was officially reclassified as a terrorism and money laundering matter, and he remained in detention. More than a year later, on 22 January 2026, he was sentenced to an additional three and a half years in prison.

However, investigations conducted during more than a year with the Central Bank, Interpol and European authorities revealed no suspicious transactions or hidden assets. Mourad Zeghidi himself had requested a tax settlement in January 2025. In the absence of any conclusive evidence, the conviction remains inexplicable. His defence has appealed.

Oppressive prison conditions

He is held in a 20-square-metre cell in Mornaguia prison, in southwest Tunis, where his correspondence is limited to a four-page letter every two weeks, and his right to direct visits - that is to say, without a glass partition and for limited time - have been suspended since December 2024.

His sister Meriem and his daughters Yesmine and Inès are campaigning for him. They insist that, although disguised as a tax case - one based on "tax offences that concern 90% of Tunisians and can be resolved in a few days" - Mourad Zeghidi's case is "purely political and is the direct result of a desire to censor press freedom and freedom of expression."

Mourad Zeghidi 's detention highlights the decline of a country that has fallen 56 places in RSF's World Press Freedom Indexsince 2021 and is now ranked 129th.