Four Years of Proceedings, a Verdict Reaffirmed

The story begins in 2022. On June 13 of that year, amid a broader judicial mobilization, Anas Hmaidi was accused of deliberately disrupting a preliminary hearing at the Monastir court of first instance. The context matters: weeks earlier, 57 judges had been dismissed by presidential decree, triggering outrage within the judiciary.

For the case to proceed, Hmaidi’s judicial immunity first had to be lifted. That happened on September 20, 2022, by decision of the Provisional Judicial Authority. The investigation moved forward from there, eventually leading to trial on charges of obstructing freedom of work under Article 136 of the Penal Code.

The first-instance verdict came on April 6, 2026: the sixth correctional chamber of the Tunis court of first instance sentenced Hmaidi to one year in prison. He appealed — but never appeared at the subsequent hearings, despite two postponements granted to his lawyers. By then, the judicial source noted, he had already left Tunisian territory.

A Defense That Fought to the End

His legal team did not hold back. Before the first-instance court, they had requested a trial postponement pending the outcome of an appeal against the lifting of Hmaidi’s immunity, as well as consideration of a Court of Cassation ruling on a request to relocate the case. Both requests were denied.

His lawyers also pointed to what they described as procedural flaws, particularly regarding fair trial guarantees and the union rights meant to protect magistrates organized within a professional association.

The Association of Tunisian Magistrates has consistently maintained that the proceedings were flawed from the start. The organization points to the case’s transfer between multiple courts, an investigation it says was rushed, and the fact that its president was never questioned before being referred to trial. More broadly, the AMT views the case as a form of retaliation against Hmaidi’s union activism and his advocacy for judicial independence — and has called from the outset for the charges to be dropped.

A Trial Rooted in a Deeper Crisis

To understand this case, one must go back to the rupture of 2022. The dismissal of 57 judges that year, officially justified as an anti-corruption measure, was widely seen within the judiciary as a heavy-handed move lacking sufficient safeguards. The response came swiftly: strikes, sit-ins, sustained mobilization led in large part by the AMT, an association founded in 2016 to defend judicial independence from political power.

This episode fits into a broader institutional realignment underway in Tunisia since 2021, which several human rights organizations describe as a gradual erosion of the separation of powers. Against this backdrop, legal proceedings targeting union, political, and media figures critical of the government have multiplied, fueling concerns over pluralism and judicial independence in the country.

The Court of Appeal’s ruling does not close off the legal avenues still available under the law. Whether Anas Hmaidi, now outside Tunisia, will pursue them remains an open question — as does what this ruling will ultimately mean for the standoff that has pitted part of Tunisia’s judiciary against the executive for the past four years.

The post Anas Hmaidi Sentenced: Tunisian Appeals Court Confirms One-Year Prison Term appeared first on Jdd Tunisie.

Demands That Transcend Professional Grievances

On the surface, the Tunisian Order of Lawyers lists six grievances: judicial sector reform, improved working conditions, the restoration of the Supreme Council of Magistrates, modernization of court infrastructure, the sustainability of the lawyers’ pension fund, and an end to prosecutions targeting certain bar members. In reality, these demands point toward a more serious diagnosis: that of a judicial apparatus in disrepair, directed from the top by the state executive.

Boubaker Blathaout, the bar’s dean, articulated the underlying stakes during the first gathering: “We defend our right to freedom, we guarantee fair trials, and we demand that justice not be used as an instrument of political conflict.” This seemingly basic assertion carries outsized symbolic weight in the current Tunisian context. It signals that the legal profession has grown weary of functioning as a willing extra in a system where judicial robes too often conform to the wishes of those in power.

The lawyers’ placards conveyed the same message with cutting directness: “No to the dismissal of the bar’s demands. No to the denial of justice.” Other signs read: “No restriction of the right to defense,” and “Guarantees of fair trial must exist.” These are not the slogans of a professional association seeking mere salary increases. They are declarations about the nature of state power itself.

The Crux: A Supreme Council in Limbo Since 2022

The fixation on the Supreme Council of Magistrates is not coincidental. After President Kais Saied’s seizure of power in February 2022—which brought about the dissolution of this institution—lawyers expected a swift restoration of this constitutional safeguard. Yet four years later, the CSM remains quasi-nonexistent as a functioning body. This absence is not a matter of bureaucratic sluggishness; it reflects a deliberate intent to keep judges dependent on executive will.

Without this council, magistrates lack any meaningful protection against political pressure. Appointments, transfers, and dismissals now flow from administrative decisions made without institutional counterweight. Lawyers view this situation as symptomatic of a deeper pathology: the progressive instrumentalization of judicial power. Several attorneys have themselves faced criminal prosecutions for alleged financial corruption—charges they regard as retaliatory measures.

The question haunting the bar is uncomfortable but essential: In a state where the executive controls judicial outcomes, can there be justice? The international legal community has answered this question with mounting alarm. The International Commission of Jurists, Amnesty International, and MEDEL (the Mechanism for Cooperation among the Maghreb and West) have all issued reports documenting what they describe as a “grave erosion” of judicial independence in Tunisia.

Government Silence as a Form of Response

When confronted with this mobilization, the government has chosen indifference. Leïla Jaffel, Minister of Justice since October 2021, has consistently refused substantive dialogue with the bar association. The ministry went so far as to announce, even before the strike began, that courts would operate normally—a gesture of pure defiance. No offer of compromise. No opening to negotiation. Only refusal to listen.

This posture reveals something consequential: the executive views the judicial branch as its exclusive prerogative. By ignoring the bar’s demands, it sends a message to judges who might still harbor doubts about their subordination: independence is not a right but a revocable privilege.

A Judicial System Corroded by Institutional Breakdown

The lawyers’ strike does not emerge from nowhere. It responds to manifest deterioration across the judicial sector. International reports converge on a shared diagnosis: Tunisia’s judicial independence is undergoing systematic erosion.

The magistrates themselves have sounded alarms. The Tunisian Association of Judges has noted that the 2025-2026 judicial year marks the third consecutive year without institutional guarantees of independence. Rule-of-law violations accumulate: opposition politicians tried via videoconference on charges of “conspiracy against state security,” prolonged detention without procedural safeguards, a judicial system patently segmented along political lines.

Parallel to these political machinations, material conditions have deteriorated. Court clerks are understaffed. Buildings decay. Case delays stretch indefinitely. For lawyers—already accustomed to navigating a system grown hostile to robust defense—this combination breeds exhaustion. After years of unanswered requests for dialogue, patience has curdled into resistance.

The Contours of a Political Impasse

This strike exposes a fundamental contradiction at the heart of post-2022 Tunisia. The country adopted a constitution in 2014 whose Article 102 explicitly enshrines judicial independence. But once a president decides to exercise power differently, that independence becomes an inconvenient obstacle to be circumscribed or eliminated.

Lawyers striking today are not fighting for salary increases or shorter hours. They are fighting for the professional capacity itself—which is to say, fighting for the fundamental right of every person to competent legal defense. When the state renders the practice of defense impossible, it dismantles the foundations of rule of law.

The government, for its part, appears to be betting on attrition. It calculates that lawyers, facing lost income from the strike, will eventually accept the status quo. But this calculation overlooks a crucial social reality: no large-scale professional mobilization remains confined to its original grievances for long. It becomes symbolic, a crystallization of broader collective frustration. In a Tunisia already fatigued by political instability, the lawyers’ movement may well become a warning sign for growing swaths of the population.

The Critical Weeks Ahead

The timeline is compressed. Regional strikes will be staged through June 8th, followed by the national gathering on June 18th. If the bar achieves the level of mobilization it anticipates, courts could genuinely grind to a halt. No democracy has ever endured for long without a functioning judicial apparatus, however imperfect.

Two scenarios remain possible. In the first, the government makes partial concessions: it opens dialogue, accepts some reforms, restores the Supreme Council. This would require the executive to acknowledge limits to its power. In the second scenario, the strike persists, tensions escalate, and collateral damage mounts—hesitant investors, eroded public confidence, international legitimacy questioned.

Between these paths, the government has not yet chosen. Perhaps it has not yet grasped that the choice is urgent.

A Democracy at a Crossroads

The mobilization of Tunisia’s lawyers raises a broader question: Can a regime long prosper by evacuating its institutions of meaning? The answer Tunisia provides in the coming weeks will reveal much about its capacity to construct a durable rule of law—or its capitulation before that task

The post Tunisia: Justice Under Siege in a Political Power Play appeared first on Jdd Tunisie.

At the heart of the dispute is the persistent inertia of the Ministry of Justice regarding trade union demands and repeated warnings about the deteriorating working conditions in Tunisian courts. A national press conference is also planned to inform the public of the situation in the country’s courthouses. Dean Boubaker Belthabet is signing the official statements on behalf of the council.

A precise strike schedule, a lasting anger

The decisions made on May 13, 2026, are not improvised. They are part of a gradual, carefully planned escalation by the National Bar Council, following what the profession describes as a deafening dialogue with the Ministry of Justice.

The action plan has two components. First, a series of mandatory regional strikes, spread over several weeks according to a precise geographical schedule:

Tuesday, May 19, 2026: Courts in Tunis, Nabeul, and Zaghouan are targeted, with a rally at the Tunis court of first instance.

Thursday, May 21, 2026: The bar associations of Bizerte, Béja, Jendouba, Le Kef, and Siliana will strike, with a rally at the Bizerte court of first instance.

Monday, May 25, 2026: Lawyers from Sfax, Gafsa, Tozeur, and Sidi Bouzid join the movement, gathering at the Sfax 1 court of first instance.

Monday, June 1, 2026: Médenine, Gabès, Kébili, and Tataouine follow, with a rally at the Médenine court of first instance.

Monday, June 8, 2026: The bar associations of Sousse, Monastir, Mahdia, Kairouan, and Kasserine close ranks around the Sousse court of first instance.

Second, a mandatory general national strike is scheduled for Thursday, June 18, 2026, with a central rally at the Tunis court of justice — the most symbolically charged date of the entire action program.

Starting May 18, all lawyers, without exception, are called upon to wear the red armband during their hearings in all courts of the Republic. This gesture — visible, sober, indisputable — is a form of silent protest intended for magistrates, litigants, and the public. The Tunis regional branch, under the signature of its president, Soufiane Ben El Haj Mohamed, released an official statement on May 14, 2026, to coordinate the practical details of the May 19 strike in the capital’s courts.

Specific demands, absent responses

To understand why the profession has reached this point, one must return to the roots of the conflict. The Bar Council recalls having repeatedly and officially requested a dialogue with the Ministry of Justice on a set of structural demands, spanning several fronts.

The first concerns the judicial infrastructure itself. The Bar Association denounces the advanced deterioration of court buildings: insufficient courtrooms, outdated equipment, and working conditions that no longer allow for a public justice service to be provided in dignified conditions. These situations directly affect the quality of procedures and, ultimately, the rights of litigants.

The second front concerns the institutional functioning of the judicial system. The Council points to the persistent deadlock in establishing the Supreme Judicial Council — a constitutional body whose absence affects the governance of the judiciary — as well as the use of what the profession describes as arbitrary circulars to organize the transfers of magistrates, without prior consultation or compensation for those affected.

The third issue concerns the social protection of lawyers themselves. Documented dysfunctions of the National Retirement and Social Welfare Fund for lawyers are a major concern for the entire profession, especially for generations approaching retirement.

Faced with these demands, the Ministry of Justice has reportedly not formulated any substantial response since the extraordinary general assembly of May 1, 2026 — a meeting described by the Bar Council as having brought together hundreds of lawyers from across the country, in a display of professional solidarity rare in its scale.

Historical reminder: a profession that has always resisted

The activism of the Tunisian Bar Association is not new. It is part of a long and well-documented tradition dating back to the first decades of the independent state.

As early as the 1960s and 1970s, under President Habib Bourguiba, Tunisian lawyers constituted one of the few professional bodies capable of organized resistance against the authoritarian excesses of the Destour regime. The National Bar Association, founded in 1956 following independence, quickly established itself as a counter-power space, protected by the nature of the legal profession and the formal independence guarantees attached to the practice of law.

In the 1980s, as Tunisia experienced a severe economic crisis and social tensions rose, lawyers played an active role in defending prosecuted trade unionists and political opponents, helping to maintain a minimal space for legal protection in a judicial system under pressure.

Under Ben Ali, the profession had an ambivalent relationship with the regime. Officially controlled, it nevertheless sheltered dissident voices, defended human rights activists, and produced figures who found themselves at the forefront of the post-2011 transition — including Chawki Tabib, a former bar president and former head of the National Anti-Corruption Authority, recently imprisoned in circumstances his supporters describe as politically motivated.

After the 2011 revolution, the Bar Association experienced an unprecedented period of ferment. Lawyers actively participated in drafting the founding texts of the new Republic, sat on national dialogue bodies, and contributed to the legislative framework of the democratic transition. The Bar also played a mediating role during the political crises of 2013, alongside the other components of the National Dialogue Quartet, which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2015.

Since 2021, the profession finds itself in a new position: no longer a partner in a transition, but a sentinel watching for institutional regression with growing concern. The imprisonment of Chawki Tabib, the pressure on magistrates, the deterioration of working conditions in the courts — all signals the Bar interprets as an attack on the very foundations of the rule of law.

A tipping point ahead

The action program adopted on May 13 runs until June 18, 2026. Until then, every hearing in every court in the country will be marked by the lawyers’ red armband of protest. If the regional strikes do not produce a response from the ministry, the national strike on June 18 promises to be a breaking point.

The Bar Council has warned it will not stop there: the determination to “pursue all forms of struggle” is written in black and white in the statement signed by Dean Belthabet. What the government chooses to do — or not do — in the coming weeks will say much about the real state of dialogue between the executive branch and intermediary bodies in Tunisia.

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