Mehdi Ben Gharbia, a former member of the Constituent Assembly in 2011 and a former minister in the government of Youssef Chehed, was arrested on October 17, 2021, for being accused of financial crimes and money laundering.

Over the past few months, Mehdi ben Gharbia has been subjected to several violations while in detention. His defense team reported that he had been mistreated and denied his right to visitation by the General Directorate of Prisons and Rehabilitation, which deprived him of his right to meet his 4-year-old son in person. This was in accordance with orders of the investigating judge at the Court of First Instance in Sousse, who is in charge of the case, which led Mehdi to engage in a hunger strike inside the prison in November 2021.

Moreover, the charges against him were later withdrawn. Despite the expiration of the Pre-Trial detention period, as stipulated by Article 84 of the Tunisian Code of Criminal Procedure, which sets it for 6 months, Mehdi Ben Gharbia was not released, even after his defense team demanded his release on April 18, 2022, which has left him imprisoned to his day without any legal justification, which is considered arbitrary detention imposed by the authorities on one of its citizens and a clear violation of trial procedures.