Tunisian Court Ordered Seven Years In Jail For Men Posting Cartoons For Prophet Mohammed On Facebook

Posted on Apr 6 2012 - 8:19am by CONTRIBUTOR

Editor’s Note: Guest Author Pratibha is a technology enthusiast interested in analysing and reporting about different technologies.

A  Tunisian court ruling Jabeur Mejri and Ghazi Beji to seven years in jail for posting exposed cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed on Facebook. On Thursday statement ministry spokesman Chokri Nefti said that “They were sentenced, one of them in absentia, to seven years in prison, for transgressing morality, defamation and disrupting public order”. The judgment was specified on March 28; however wasn’t statement till today while bloggers ongoing place information in relation to the case on the Internet. Beji was the one that was not present. He takes off when he heard his friend Mejri had named him as being tortured.

Beji told Tunisia Live that “When the security forces first arrested Mejri, they told him that they detained him to protect him from any Salafist attack, but later, they assaulted and tortured him. I was told that he mentioned my name under torture. When I heard of what happened to my friend. I knew that I had to run away. I went to Algeria, Turkey and then crossed illegally to Greece. Here, I am now trying to contact NGOs and other countries to grant me asylum.”

All this started when Beji, a biotechnology food engineer, wrote a book called “the Illusion of Islam,” in which he talks regarding his observation about Islam and religion. Mejri, an English teacher, for the meantime wrote a book called “Dark Land,” in which he disparages the government, Islamists, and Arabs in general. Next to the time of script, Mejri is at rest in custody whereas Beji is in Greece. This case will probable more fuel allegation that Tunisia’s new Islamist influential are stifling free speech.

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