Torture in Tunisia

We investigate allegations that despite its new democratic institutions, police torture continues in Tunisia.


It has been four years now since a popular uprising in Tunisia ousted former president Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. It was hoped then that the Jasmine revolution - and the democratic governments to which it gave birth - would usher in a new era; that consensus politics and the rule of law would be reflected in the actions of those supposed to protect society from criminality, wherever it lies.

State repression, so much a feature of the old regime, was meant to be at an end; police brutality, torture and the abuse of human rights were to be consigned to history.

But this, it seems, may have been wishful thinking. As this People & Power investigation has found, while police brutality is no longer officially sanctioned by the state, it continues unabated nonetheless. Many of those responsible for enforcing the rule of law in Tunisia are themselves still breaking it, time after time.