Mehdi Zagrouba was imprisoned due to his presence in Tunis-Carthage Airport on March 15, 2023, in what is known as the \u201cAirport Case.\u201d Initially, the events of the case took place on March 15, 2022, when a woman was prevented from leaving Tunisian territory due to her name being on the list of individuals banned from traveling based on border restrictions. At that moment, the woman contacted the members of the Coalition of Dignity, who immediately went to the scene to examine the situation, which led to a dispute between them and the Police of Borders, which escalated into clashes between the members of the parliament and security personnel. As a result, the Security Union filed a complaint against them, accusing them of trespassing in airport-restricted areas and assaulting security officers while they were performing their duties. On the other hand, the parliamentarians argued that they were carrying out their supervisory duties and seeking justice for an oppressed woman. Similarly, Attorney Mehdi Zagrouba stated that he was executing his task by representing the woman at the airport\u2019s administration following the conflicts with airport security; hence, they filed a complaint. Subsequently, an investigation was opened, and the civilian judiciary took charge of the case after an interrogation was conducted by the Profesuction Office at the Court of First Instance in Tunis. A month later, the case was referred to the Military Justice after adapting the case\u2019s findings to be considered a conspiracy against the internal security of the state. According to Mehdi\u2019s statement on his personal Facebook page, he was personally pursued after a military investigating judge had demanded the investigating judge add his name to the report of July 2021 for investigation. On Saturday, July 31, 2021, Mehdi Zagrouba was placed directly under investigation without a legal summons or being informed that he was the subject of a criminal investigation.<\/p>\n
On August 2, 2023, the victim of the violation, Mehdi Zagrouba, visited the headquarters of the National Lawyers\u2019 Association at the Palace of Justice to file a complaint and report the matter to the Regulatory Bodies. Consequently, police forces surrounded the courthouse and attempted to enter the headquarters of the National Lawyers\u2019 Association. This incident was met with rejection by the Public Prosector\u2019s Office at the Court of First Instances in Tunis and the Tunisian Young Lawyers Association. Therefore, the investigating judge agreed to reconsider those actions that violated the legal texts and respect for the law, the measures were all withdrawn, and Mehdi was allowed a legal summons to appear before the investigating judge by Article 68 of the Penal Code. On December 2, 2021, Mehdi Zagrouba was interrogated by the investigating judge who, on the same day, issued an arrest warrant without hearing his side of the story. Mehdi considered this a flagrant violation of the provisions of Article 72 of the Journal of the Criminal Procedure. The Military Prosecution Department had decided later to release him on December 15, 2021. Later on, the investigating judge decided to close the case and preserve the charge of conspiracy against the internal state security that was filed against him by the military prosecutor. On January 20, 2023, The Military Court of Appeal issued its verdict, sentencing Attorney Mehdi Zagrouba to 11 months in prison and prohibiting him from exercising his profession for years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":7241,"template":"","meta":{"datee":1627761600,"govern":"Cit\u00e9 el Khadra Delegation","violation_location_map":"\u0645\u0637\u0627\u0631 \u062a\u0648\u0646\u0633 \u0642\u0631\u0637\u0627\u062c \u0627\u0644\u062f\u0648\u0644\u064a\u060c 1080 Tunis Cedex\u060c \u062a\u0648\u0646\u0633\u060c \u062a\u0648\u0646\u0633\u200e"},"ecupation":[249,245],"case_status":[231],"governorate":[232],"violation_type":[240],"class_list":["post-8339","violations","type-violations","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","ecupation-lawyer","ecupation-politician","case_status-231","governorate-tunis","violation_type-arbitrary-arrest"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/map.intersection.uno\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/violations\/8339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/map.intersection.uno\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/violations"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/map.intersection.uno\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/violations"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/map.intersection.uno\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/violations\/8339\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8341,"href":"https:\/\/map.intersection.uno\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/violations\/8339\/revisions\/8341"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/map.intersection.uno\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/map.intersection.uno\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"ecupation","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/map.intersection.uno\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ecupation?post=8339"},{"taxonomy":"case_status","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/map.intersection.uno\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/case_status?post=8339"},{"taxonomy":"governorate","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/map.intersection.uno\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/governorate?post=8339"},{"taxonomy":"violation_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/map.intersection.uno\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/violation_type?post=8339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}