Zouari, a journalist with the now defunct weekly Al-Fajr of the banned Islamic Al-Nahda Party, was sentenced on October 8 to 13 months in prison on two charges: violating administrative controls enacted after his release from a previous prison sentence and defamation. CPJ views his current jailing as a part of a pattern of harassment against the journalist, who was released from prison in 2002 after spending 11 years behind bars for belonging to the Al-Nahda Party.
On August 17, 2003, authorities detained Zouari in Ben Guerdane, a market town near Zarzis in southern Tunisia, after he met with a group of local and international human rights activists.
In October, a court ruled that Zouari had violated administrative controls barring him from leaving Zarzis, although the charge is widely viewed as a pretext to harass the journalist, according to Tunisian human rights activists.
During the October court proceedings, the court also convicted Zouari of defamation. An employee of a cybercafé sued Zouari for defaming her during an argument in April when she barred Zouari--apparently under pressure from Tunisian officials, according to the journalist's colleagues--from accessing the Internet.
Previously, on August 28, 1992, a military court sentenced Zouari to 11 years in prison. He was tried along with 279 other individuals accused of belonging to Al-Nahda. International human rights groups monitoring the trial concluded that it fell far below international standards of justice.