Al Jazeera journalist Samir Sassi released in Tunisia News

Tunisia- Samir Sassi, a journalist at Al Jazeera’s Tunis bureau, was released on Monday after being interrogated before the anti-terrorism judicial branch in relation to a blog post he published last December.

The director of Al Jazeera’s office in Tunisia, Lotfi Hajji, said earlier that the investigation with Sassi took place before a security team of the National Guard at the Al-Aouina barracks in the capital, Tunis, at the request of the judicial pole to combat terrorism against the backdrop of a blog post he published on December 29 last year.

Hajji explained to Al Jazeera Net that journalist Samir Sassi was initially taken – Monday morning – by a security team affiliated with the Tadamon neighborhood in the capital, where he resides, and then referred him, in the event of an arrest, to the Public Prosecution at the Ariana Court, which in turn referred him to the investigating judge in the Judicial Pole. To combat terrorism.

On the fourth of last January, journalist Samir Sassi was arrested for two days for investigation against the background of the content of a Facebook page in the name of the neighborhood in which he resides, “Solidarity News”. He was asked during the investigation about his connection to that page, and Sassi denied any connection to that page.

The investigating judge released Sassi two days after his arrest, but the case was not closed and remained ongoing, and 10 days ago he was summoned again for investigation.

Hajji said, “This time the investigation against him was not about his connection to that page, but rather about a blog post he published on December 29.”

He pointed out that lawyers, as well as the Tunisian Journalists Syndicate, expressed their shock and astonishment at being investigated “under arrest” for a blog post in which he expressed a certain opinion.

He explained that the investigation into Sassi comes in the context of the escalation of security and judicial prosecutions against a number of journalists, based on injunctive laws such as terrorism, the penal code, and the communications code, without implementing Decree 115 regulating the journalism profession in Tunisia.