Fatma Riahi well known Fatma Arabicca, author of the blog  http://fatma-arabicca.blogspot.com has been convened  Monday, November 2nd,by the Criminal Brigade Gorjani in Tunis.

She was released the same evening to be reconvened on Tuesday, November 3rd. She was then escorted by officers of the brigade to her home in Monastir in order to fetch her and get her computer.
Since she has been arrested Fatma Arabicca could not see her lawyer, Miss Laila Ben Debba but for few minutes.

Indeed, the criminal brigade has legally the possibility to keep her in custody  in those circumstances for 8 days before presenting her to a judge Fatma Riahi, 34, is charged with defamation on her own blog and is also accused of being in fact the famous blogger behind  Debat Tunise (Tunisia Debate ) aka-Z-.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemned the October 29th arrest of Taoufik Ben Brik, a Tunisian journalist and consistent critic of the country's ruling party.

In a statement released the following day, RSF accused Tunisian authorities of falsely charging the journalist in order to muzzle him. Ben Brik, 41, was arrested after an alleged altercation with a woman and charged with violating public decency, defamation, assault and damaging private property.

"These are trumped-up charges designed to ensure that Ben Brik languishes in prison," the statement reads. "This dissident journalist needs to take medicine regularly for a serious condition, Cushing's syndrome, but the authorities have opted to cause as much harm as possible. Therefore, we call for his release on humanitarian grounds pending his trial."

One of the lawyers defending Ben Brik, Ahmed Nejib Chebbi, said the complainant in the case "deliberately crashed into my client's car, which was stopped at a parking lot in Tunis". Next, the complainant allegedly left her car, yelled at Ben Brik, accused him of deliberately hitting her car, and finally tore his clothes "in order to provoke him to attack her", according to the statement.

According to RCD Secretary-General Mohammed Ghariani, Ben Brik will be tried not because of his opinions, but because of his alleged attack on a woman.

"[O]rganisations [such as RSF] have proven to be non-objective, biased and only listening to one side of the story," said Ghariani, speaking at a press conference on Tuesday.

"Tunisia is big, and bigger than these marginalised organisations," said the secretary-general, adding that "a citizen who is a human rights activist is not immune to legal consequences".

But Ben Brik's lawyers said that the legal proceedings against their client stemmed from his recent articles in several Western newspapers, in which he harshly criticised the Tunisian government. The articles were published around the time of the October 25th elections, in which President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali won a fifth term with more than 89% of the vote, and the ruling Democratic Constitutional Rally (RCD) easily maintained its majority in Parliament.

Ben Brik is currently being held at Mornaguia prison, 20km north of Tunis. His trial is scheduled to begin on November 19th. RSF has warned that Ben Brik's health will "deteriorate quickly if he is unable to take medicine at regular set times".

Tunisia has witnessed various controversies over freedom of the press, including an alleged assault on two well-known journalists in March 2008.

Some members of the local media expressed concerns about how the most recent case involving a journalist would unfold.

"It's true that, according to the legal cover shown in the public prosecution's papers, the case is a public right case," journalist Taoufik Ayachi said in a statement to Magharebia. "However, the basics of the case, which are represented in the identity of the defendant and the timing of the incident itself, may completely strip it of the form it has been rolled out in and put it in the framework of opinion cases or political cases, in which activists are pursued not as people with dissident opinions, but as defendants in public rights cases. There are many precedents in this field."

Just as it was reported yesterday by Tunis Carthage Times, the prisoners of the Mining Region(The mining area of Gafsa, 400 km southwest of Tunis) were released today .

It was on January 5, 2008, in Redeyef, a town of 37,000 inhabitants. The CPG published the results of a public examination for the recruitment of 80 employees. But the list was considered fraudulent. The young unemployed rebelled and occupied the secretariat of the regional miners' union (Ugtt), considered to be involved in the scandal.

They were soon joined by 11 widows who asked CPG for respecting the quota allotted to the sons of deaths at work. The other sections of the Trade union joined the protesters. Meanwhile in Tunis, a national committee of solidarity with the people of the mines was created.

On April 4 a day of solidarity was held in Tunis, with the participation of some trade unionist from Redeyef. But on their return, the morning of April 7, they were arrested together with dozens of activists. Among them there was also Adnan Hajji, the secretary of the union of teachers in Redeyef.

The same day the city's teachers suspended classes and called for a general strike that lasts for the following three days. On April 9 around thirty women descended to the streets asking for the freedom of their husbands. The city joins them and hundreds of people marched towards the prefecture. The day after, the trade unionists were released. At their arrival into the city, a crowd of 20.000 people welcomed their new leader, Adnan Hajji.

Meanwhile some solidarity initiatives started also in France, organized by Tunisian migrants, especially in Nantes, where a large community from Redeyef lives. In the mining area demonstrations went on. On May 6, 2008, Hicham Ben Jeddou died from electrical shock while a group of young unemployed occupied the generator of Tabeddit in sign of protest. Witnesses accused police of having turned on electricity knowing that he was touching the wires. It was the beginning of the repression.

Reinforcements were sent from Tunis to the mining area. Police checked all the accesses to Redeyef. And plainclothes agents monitored the main actors of the protest. On June 6, police opened fire on a demonstration. A guy, Hafnaoui Maghzaoui, was shot dead. And 27 people were injured. One of them, Abdelkhaleq Aamidi, died after three month in hospital, on September 14. Within a few weeks, two hundred people were arrested. Trade unionists as well as ordinary people. The night between June 21 and 22 the leader of the protest Adnan Hajji was arrested again.

It was the most important social movement of the Country during the last 20 years. A spontaneous and popular movement which keep on struggling despite the repression and censorship.

The region of the mines looks like a lunar landscape. But under the grey mountains among Moularès, Redeyef, Mdhilla and Metlaoui there is a treasure: 600 millions tons of phosphate. The mines are held by the public Phosphate company of Gafsa (CPG). In 2008 the price of a ton of phosphate rock has doubled because of the growing demand of fertilizers in China and India. Tunisia is the fifth producer in the world and has still reserves for the next 100 years. Yet the region of Gafsa is one of the poorest. The technical modernization of mining reduced by 55% the number of employees in the past 20 years, from 11,000 to 5,000. And it caused a serious economic crisis in the towns of miners, built from scratch during the French colonization to house the workforce in the early twentieth century. Today, unemployment affects 40% of young people. Young people who often have no other way out except burning the borders, as they say in Arabic. Harrag. Towards Libya and then Lampedusa. It was them the young people who started the protest .

The movement was beheaded. But no woman was arrested. And so the women, the wives of trade unionists and activists in jail, returned on the streets, on July 27, demanding the release of prisoners. Among them there was also Zakiya Dhifaoui. Born in 1966, she is journalist and teacher. She came from Kairouan to write a report on the opposition newspaper Muatinun. But her report will never be published. Because that day Dhifaoui was arrested. Her arrest was a message sent to all the Tunisian journalists: don’t come to Redeyef and don’t write about it. It is the other side of the repression: the censorship of any sensitive information. Dhifaoui was sentenced to four and a half months of prison. But she is not the only journalist in jail. Actually it is the freedom of expression itself to be judged.

The web sites Dailymotion and Youtube, where the videos of the demonstrations and of the police violences have been uploaded, are banned since November 2007. Masoud Romdhani, spokesman of the National solidarity movement, has been beaten by plainclothes agents in Tunis. Amor Gondher, journalist of the opposition newspaper Tareq el Jedid, was beaten by two policemen on the evening of June 26, in Nefta. Boulqaddous Fahim, a journalist of El Hiwar TV - which published the video of Redeyef on the Italian satellite channel Arcoiris - is reported to be missing since July 5, as he run away in order to escape his arrest warrant. The author of those videos, Mahmoud Raddadi, had been arrested on June 21 2008. Raddadi and Boulqaddous will soon be judged together with 38 other protesters, including 14 trade unionists. They are accused to have formed a combination for unlawful purposes. The hearing will begin at the end of November at the Court of Gafsa.

Without any doubt this is one of the greatest political trial under the presidency of Ben Ali . A presidency which has been lasting uninterrupted since 1987. In November 2009, there will be the presidential elections. The deaths of Redeyef will not be enough to undermine the power of the Constitutional Democratic Party (RDC). Nor to revive the opposition after years of repression of dissent. The defense lawyers know it, that the judgement has already been written. But in the history there is an accumulation... says one of them under anonymity. Actually the Tunisian poet Abou el Kacem Chebbi, told it a century ago: "When people choose life, fate must respond, night must brighten and chains must break".