Several Judges Mark Anniversary of “Judicial Massacre” with Protest

A group of judges and lawyers held a demonstration on Thursday morning in front of the main Tunis courthouse to protest President Kais Saied’s firing of 57 judges exactly one year ago.

“You don’t want to cleanse the sector. You want to put your hands over it, Mister President, just like what [former president Zine El Abidine] Ben Ali did,” Kalthoum Kannou, a former head of the Association of Tunisian Judges (AMT) and a presidential candidate in 2014 told Meshkal. “I consider these as political decisions against a number of the most honorable judges, whom I know personally. This is a liquidation of judges who are not liked by the political power.”

Several judges wearing their uniforms showed up for the demonstration which had been organized by the AMT, alongside lawyers, some of whom are representing the judges. Several of the judges joined the demonstration in between court hearings they were presiding over during normal work hours.

On June 1, 2022, President Saied issued Decree 35 of 2022, giving the president the power to “issue a presidential decree pronouncing the dismissal of any judge because of an act attributed to him,” and that any such decree dismissing a judge is “only subject to appeal after the pronouncement of an irrevocable penal judgment.” At the same time, Saied issued another decree referencing Decree 35 that dismissed 57 judges by name. Earlier that day, Saied had made a recorded speech, with a video of it posted to the Presidency’s Facebook page, in which he referred to what he called corruption among judges and their blocking of terrorism cases, among other accusations of wrongdoing.

At the time, judges called it a “judicial massacre” and held a strike in protest on June 8, 2022. Since then, the administrative court ruled that 49 of those 57 should be reinstated, but the Ministry of Justice declined to implement that court ruling. Judges then filed lawsuits against Minister of Justice Leila Jaffel this January for not implementing that administrative court ruling reinstating the judges. One of the lawyers heading the Committee to Defend the Dismissed Judges, Ayachi Hammami, is himself facing prosecution for criticizing the executive branch’s control over the judiciary in an interview.

“We say to the woman sitting two hundred meters away, the Minister of Justice, who is committing the crime of not executing judicial rulings: judgments have been issued since August 9, and since that time, she refuses to implement them. Failure to implement rulings is considered corruption by Tunisian law, and corruption is punishable by law,” Hammami said addressing the crowd and pointing at the Justice Ministry’s headquarters.

Neither Justice Minister Jaffel nor the Ministry of Justice appear to have responded to the lawsuits against her for not implementing the administrative court’s decision.