Tunisian financial crimes police arrested Mohamed Yousfi, editor-in-chief of the investigative outlet Al-Katiba and a prominent critic of President Kais Saied, on September 4 as he arrived at Express FM radio station to discuss Tunisia’s water crisis on air. An investigating judge has since ordered him held in pretrial detention.
Yousfi is being investigated on allegations of illicit enrichment and money laundering for an organized group, charges tied to his work at Al-Katiba, his Facebook posts and his personal finances. He fell ill while in custody and required surgery to remove his appendix; as of this week he remained hospitalized without access to visitors.
Press freedom groups have rejected the charges as retaliation. “Financial crime allegations are being used as pretext to target another critical journalist,” said Sara Qudah, regional director of the Committee to Protect Journalists. The National Union of Tunisian Journalists said Yousfi had faced an “online smear and incitement campaign” in the weeks before his arrest.
Journalists and activists gathered outside the courthouse to protest and demand his release. Zied Dabbar, head of the journalists’ union, put the pattern bluntly: “journalists who disturb authorities face legal persecution.”
Yousfi is not the only Tunisian journalist behind bars. Radio commentators Mourad Zghidi and Borhen Bsaies are already serving three-year sentences on financial crime charges, and Zied el-Heni is serving a one-year sentence for allegedly “harming others” through his commentary. Rights groups say all three cases, like Yousfi’s, rely on financial or defamation-style charges rather than direct accusations tied to their journalism.
Critics trace the pattern back to 2021, when Saied suspended parliament and began ruling by decree, dismantling checks that had made Tunisia a rare post-Arab Spring democratic success story. Since then, financial and cybercrime prosecutions have become the government’s preferred tool against critics, allowing officials to sidestep direct press freedom claims while still jailing reporters, opposition figures and online commentators.
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