they printed out the interrogation statement. When I asked to read it, the police said “Shut up! We wrote exactly what you said.” They threatened me, saying, “We’ll send you behind the sun [meaning we will kill you].” I signed, but I don’t know what it said.88 Human Rights Watch heard allegations about forced confessions from ex-detainees interviewed after they were released. For example, Mourad Meherzi, a cameraman working for the independent web-based Astrolabe TV, told Human Rights Watch that police officers tried to force him to sign a statement and to confess a crime. Mourad was arrested on August 18, 2013, two days after he captured on camera the film director Nasreddine Shili hitting Culture Minister Mehdi Mabrouk in the face with an egg. On August 23, the public prosecutor brought charges against Meherzi that include conspiracy to assault a public servant and harming public morals, and issued a detention order against him. He spent five days in the detention center of Bouchoucha. He told Human Rights Watch: Police forces came to my house around 9 p.m. They were five, in plainclothes. They knocked on the door and told my sister that they were friends. She called me and when I came to the door they surrounded me and forced me into a four-wheel-drive car. They immediately started insulting me, and insulting my mother and my family. They took me to the interrogation center of Gorjani. There they started interrogating me about what happened during the egg-throwing incident. The number of investigators swelled and there were approximately 11 at some point. One of them was threatening me; he said if I don’t admit that I plotted with Nasreddine to assault the minister, he will torture me and rape me. They didn’t beat me, but they roughed me up. At some point they took me to another office, one stayed with me and two others were in another closed office, I could hear them type. After a while, they brought papers and asked me to sign. I refused, I told them I can’t sign something I didn’t read. They became angry and roughed me up. But I persisted and refused to sign.89
88 Human Rights Watch interview with Bilal, Nabeul detention center, September 14, 2013. 89 Human Rights Watch interview with Mourad Meherzi, Tunis, September 28, 2013.
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HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH | NOVEMBER 2013