Six years after the Truth and Dignity Commission’s (IVD) final report was published in the Official Gazette, on the eve of International Day for Victims of Torture, former IVD chair Sihem Ben Sedrine was sentenced to 25 years in jail in two cases linked to the commission and her role in it.
The symbolism of the timing gives an idea of the obstacles facing Tunisia’s transitional justice process.
Ben Sedrine was sentenced to five years’ in jail and a fine of 1.776 billion dinars (approximately 525 million euros) in a first case linked to an arbitration and reconciliation dossier. She was also sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment in a second case relating to the commission’s report, as well as a fine of 16 million dinars (approximately 4.7 million euros), for “obtaining undue advantages”, “causing harm to the State” and “falsification”.
The Truth Commission and its chairwoman are under fire for having included in the final version of the IVD report a paragraph on the Franco-Tunisian Bank (BFT) case. This paragraph was not in the version submitted to the President on 31 December 2018 but is in the version published on the IVD’s website on 26 March 2019. Page 57 of the chapter on corruption – and more specifically on the BFT case – is alleged to have been “added” by Ben Sedrine. But several factors contradict this allegation of malpractice:
Firstly, it was not possible that the version of the report submitted to the President be the final one. It is true that the IVD’s board voted to adopt the final report the day before, on 30 December 2018, but it gave the chairwoman until the end of January 2019 to make the corrections it had approved. This decision was recorded in the minutes of 28 December 2018, which state that Ben Sedrine was tasked with incorporating the corrections.
Secondly, on 28 December 2018, the Presidential Protocol Department informed the IVD that the deadline for submitting the report was 31 December 2018. The board then decided to print a preliminary, uncorrected version for submission to the President.
Thirdly, the content of the “addition” had been made public in a PowerPoint presentation during the closing conference of the IVD’s work, held on 14 December 2018, and was recorded (in this video, starting at 1:38:34). The same content appears in an indictment, approved by the board and referred to the courts on 31 December 2018 as part of a probe into banking corruption.
Reprisal against the IVD?
Several other members of the IVD board were also subjected to lengthy police questioning at the economic crimes unit of the National Guard in El-Aouina in connection with the same case. They were not allowed assistance from their lawyers due to their status as witnesses.
It is essential, as several United Nations rapporteurs wrote in a 2023 open letter to the Tunisian government, “that members of the IVD should not be subject to criminal prosecution as a form of reprisal for the opinions or facts contained in the commission’s work or reports, but only where wrongdoing is proven; and [it is essential] to ensure that, in cases where charges are brought against members of this institution, they are afforded the guarantees of a fair trial and due process”.
On 8 February 2021, the same four UN Special Rapporteurs had sent a first letter to the head of government warning of the risks and obstacles to the transitional justice process in Tunisia, the country that gave rise to the Arab Spring. “Allegations of financial mismanagement in the commission’s operations, which were the subject of an investigative report by the Court of Auditors, should under no circumstances be used as a pretext to invalidate the substantive work undertaken by the IVD, to annul or halt judicial proceedings, or to dismantle accountability mechanisms,” they wrote. “Furthermore, safeguards must be put in place to ensure that criminal investigations are not pursued as a form of reprisal for the opinions or facts contained in the IVD’s work or reports.”
Prosecution of Ben Sedrine also constitutes a flagrant violation of the Transitional Justice Act, which stipulates that “none of the members and officials of the Commission or any person who has carried out a mission at its request shall be held liable for the content of the reports, conclusions, opinions or recommendations expressed” in the course of its work.
Ben Sedrine, who described this verdict as “insignificant and excessive”, stated in a video posted on her Facebook page that it constituted retaliation by “the system” against the content of the commission’s report. According to her, the ultimate aim is to discredit and invalidate the report as published in the Official Gazette and “to find a legal basis to withdraw the IVD’s report from publication” -- although, she adds, it is impossible to erase its contents from Tunisians’ memory.
A transition that has lost its way
Ben Sedrine is a writer, journalist and transitional justice expert. She is a leading figure in the struggle for human rights in Tunisia, where she has been working for over 30 years to expose abuses and defend freedoms. Under the despotic regime of Ben Ali, who was overthrown in 2011, she was imprisoned, persecuted and subjected to smear campaigns. Her fight for human rights, women’s rights and freedom of expression did not end with the revolution. Since then, she has campaigned within civil society for institutional reforms and the rule of law. Ben Sedrine has received more than 15 international awards for her courage and her long struggle for freedom.
This verdict reflects an unfinished transitional justice process and a democratic transition that has lost its way. The publication of the commission’s final report in the Official Gazette was its last significant and positive achievement. Since then, none of the requirements of the Transitional Justice Act have been met by the current government.
Since May 2018, the IVD has referred more than 205 cases of serious human rights violations to the specialised criminal chambers, but no decisions have been handed down. The reparations programme was supposed to be implemented over six years following the 2018 publication of the IVD report, but this still remains to be done.
The government has changed, but the IVD’s report and recommendations have gone unanswered. This is in breach of the Transitional Justice Act, which requires the government to draw up an action plan within one year of the report’s publication to implement them. The victims, who should be at the heart of this process, now find themselves frustrated, marginalised and without hope.
Democratic transition at a standstill
Since July 2021, after the Tunisian President’s declaration of a state of emergency and the roll-out of a roadmap for political and institutional reforms, the country has seen a significant regression in human rights and the rule of law. This comes amid increasing erosion of the separation of powers and a worsening socio-economic crisis.
Whilst the country’s democratic transition has ground to a halt, the nature of human rights violations has changed, with increased infringements of fundamental freedoms targeting civil society, trade unions, media figures and members of the opposition, notably through the initiation of criminal proceedings before civil and military courts.
The suspension of parliament’s work and its subsequent dissolution also brought the parliamentary commission on transitional justice to a halt. Among the President’s first decisions, he changed the date of the revolution’s anniversary celebrations from January 14 to December 17, without consulting the victims and their families or the organizations representing them.
Establishing the truth was at the heart of the IVD’s work. In its final report, the commission expressed this imperative through its efforts to dissect the mechanisms of despotism and its systemic crimes: denunciation, imprisonment, torture, propaganda and electoral fraud. The report highlights the unlimited power of the one-party state and the abuses committed by the political police as the root cause of the violence inflicted on Tunisia’s men and women over 60 years of democratic deficit.
Despite the IVD’s enormous work and its importance for the success of Tunisia’s democratic transition, decision-makers do not seem to have fully embraced this mechanism. Things have become increasingly difficult for victims, their organizations, the specialised criminal courts and former members of the IVD. The latter, led by chair Ben Sedrine, have faced a campaign of vilification and denigration regarding their work and reports.
The old regime appears to be waging this battle, and resisting so that the truth is not revealed. Institutional reforms designed to guarantee that such violations are not repeated have not been implemented. And the new prison sentence imposed on Ben Sedrine is just one of many symptoms of a democratic transition that has gone off the rails.
Ahmed Aloui is an expert in transitional justice and human rights. He has authored several reports and studies on Tunisian transitional justice for the Al Kawakibi Centre for Democratic Transitions and is treasurer of the Tunisian Association for the Defence of Individual Freedoms (ADLI). From July 2018 to March 2026, he worked at the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.
