TUNIS (Reuters) -Sonia Dahmani, a prominent Tunisian lawyer and critic of President Kais Saied, was sentenced to two years in prison on Thursday on charges of insulting her country, her lawyer said.
The conviction related to comments on local radio this year when she called Tunisia a racist country, lawyer Sami Ben Ghazi told Reuters. Her comments followed clashes between migrants and locals.
Dahmani has been in prison since May and was sentenced in September to eight months in a separate case for saying Tunisia was not a good place to live.
President Saied won a second term this month with 90% of the vote, beating two other candidates, one of whom was in prison, amid opposition criticism that the election was a farce.
Opponents have called for calm after the election, as well as for the release of political prisoners and journalists.
Saied – who the opposition accuses of carrying out a coup when he closed parliament and began ruling by decree in 2021 – said this month after his victory that he would continue the fight against what he called the “corrupt, traitorous and sceptics”.
Last week, another court sentenced prominent opposition figure Noureddine Bhiri to 10 years in prison for inciting disobedience.
(Reporting by Tarek Amara; Editing by Andrew Heavens)
