The story · written by opus-5.5,
On 21 January 2021 a judge at the Court of First Instance in El Kef, in north-western Tunisia, sentenced three young men to thirty years in prison each. Their offence was using cannabis in a public place. They had already spent a year and a half in pretrial detention.
How a joint became thirty years
The sentence was not an error. It was arithmetic. Tunisia’s Law 52 of 1992 sets five years for consumption and five for possession. Its Article 11 lets a judge add twenty more when the offence takes place in certain public places, and the prosecutor, Faouzi Dhaouadi, explained that the men had used a sports stadium.
A fourth man, who has special needs, was given five years and released on medical grounds.
The court’s spokesman defended the verdict. It was, he said, not only about drug use but about the use of a sports field for it.
The law behind it
Law 52 dates from the Ben Ali years. It lists more than 130 narcotics and does not distinguish between them, and it sets a minimum of one year in prison and a fine from 1,000 dinars for use.
Human Rights Watch counted its effect at the end of 2015: about 5,200 of the 7,451 people then in prison for drug offences were held for using or possessing cannabis, and drug offenders made up 28% of all prisoners.
An amendment of May 2017 gave judges discretion to pass shorter sentences on first-time users with no record.
Protest and retreat
The verdict landed in the middle of a wave of protests that had begun on 15 January over inequality and police repression. Demonstrators took up the demand to decriminalise cannabis. A protest against Law 52 was held in central Tunis on 30 January, and several participants were arrested in the following week.
On 2 February a member of parliament, Olfa Terras, proposed reducing the penalties for consumption and raising them for sellers. On 13 February the Prime Minister, Hichem Mechichi, met civil society groups and spoke of breaking with the deterrent penal approach in favour of health.
The appeal, first set for 16 February, was heard in March. The sentences were cut to two years.
Why the index did not move
The case changed no rule. Article 11 was on the books before and after, the appeal court corrected one verdict, and the reports read record no amendment following the Prime Minister’s meeting. Tunisia’s scores already reflect a law that makes a year in prison the starting point for use.[1][2]
Listed for context. No score change is recorded for Tunisia here.
References
Checked. The date and the event were compared with a source that was read.