The ICJ’s Centre for the Independence of Judges and Lawyers, the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, and Lawyers without Frontiers have published a report on their observations of the hearings in the trial of the Bar Association.
The report of the observation of the hearings reveals once again the malfunctioning of the administration of justice in Tunisia as well as the increasingly significant gap between official discourse, which proclaims its attachment to respect of human rights, and the reality of the daily repression of free expression in the country.
The law and the judicial system are often used by the authorities to repress opponents of all kinds, with the government exercising constant pressure on judges in order to influence their rulings.
In conclusion, it is clear that the proceedings instituted against the Bar Association had no other purpose than to punish the lawyers for having protested against the lack of independence of the judiciary and against grossly inequitable procedures that remove all credibility from the functioning of the Tunisian justice system.
Indeed the Hammami trial has become a symbol of the malfunctioning of the administration of justice in the country.
Tunisia-trial Bar Association-trial observation report-2003-eng