Mehdi Ben Gharbia

Judicial Authority
Criminal Chamber of the Primary Court in Sousse 1

• October 16, 2021: Mehdi Ben Gharbia was arrested. Lawyer Ahmed Souab said: “Mehdi Ben Gharbia was surprised on 16/10/2021 by a large number of agents surrounding his house, which they entered at noon and searched, then they took him for a whole day in search operations of his companies and other locations, including his house located in Bizerte and remained in detention deprived of his freedom and contact with anyone and the extensive and detailed search operations did not result in the seizure of anything at all. At nine o’clock at night his interrogation by the central investigation team began on a case at the judicial pole in the capital which also turned out to be completely identical to the lies and fabrications promoted by the accounts and pages of the “Revolution News” gang and while he was staying in the hospital following a health crisis, the investigation team issued a prison order against him on behalf of the public prosecutor in Sousse without informing him and without obtaining permission regarding that until 36 hours later and he was finally discharged from the hospital on 20/10/2021 and transferred to Sousse and presented to the public prosecutor along with his company’s agent, financial manager and accountant all of whom were in detention and they were referred along with 9 of the employees of the Ben Gharbia company and account auditors who had been interrogated as witnesses throughout the primary investigation, now referred as defendants without any basis other than justifying the press release issued by the court’s prosecution announcing the news of the “referral of Mehdi Ben Gharbia with 12 defendants in money laundering crimes and financial and administrative corruption to the investigating judge”.
• October 20, 2021: The Public Prosecution at the Economic and Financial Pole decided to retain Mehdi Ben Gharbia, on the “suspicion of committing financial crimes and money laundering”. The Central Squad for Combating Economic and Financial Crimes of the National Guard was tasked with investigating the case.
• November 5, 2021: Mehdi Ben Gharbia went on a hunger strike that lasted more than fifty days, extending from the afternoon of Friday, 5/11/2021, until noon on Tuesday, 28/12/2021, in protest against his deprivation of meeting his five-year-old son in a regular direct visit without barriers especially since he I had recently lost his mother. Mehdi Ben Gharbia also demanded the end of his isolation and the rest of the prisoners in Messaadine prison from the outside world, as he was deprived of following news channels and receiving newspapers, magazines, books, and letters, and these demands were not achieved until after three weeks of the hunger strike, which caused him to lose more than 15 kilos of his weight and caused his health to deteriorate more than once, requiring his transfer to the hospital on three occasions, especially on the last occasion on 24/12/2021, where he was kept under medical supervision and persuaded to end his hunger strike, which he did on 28/12/2021.
• December 14, 2021: The decision to seal the investigation was issued, which ended in the dismissal of money laundering charges and forgery against Ben Gharbia and his release as well as Sofien Bouhachem, the company’s agent, and the maintenance of only the charge of tax violations concerning the company. The public prosecutor appealed the decision to seal the investigation on the same day. For his part, Ahmed Souab, a member of Ben Gharbia’s defense team, stated that the investigating judge in Sousse 1, who dropped the heavy charges against his client related to money laundering and terrorism, was dismissed.
• January 6, 2022: One of the chambers of the Sousse court rejected the conditional release request submitted by Mehdi Ben Gharbia’s lawyers and postponed the consideration of the case until February. The defense team of Ben Gharbia said that it was proven since 18/01/2022 that the public prosecutor deliberately fabricated the review of the inclusion of the receipt of criminal investigation materials by forging the receipt date and fabricating an incorrect date, as he received from the preliminary investigating judge the results of the investigation which were in favor of Mehdi Ben Gharbia since 23/11/2021 and hid them from the investigating judge and especially the results of the investigation of the customs administration in Sousse and the investigation of the Mediterranean Air Services Company, and he did not include them in the file until 17/01/2022, knowing that some of the contents of the results of those searches serve the purpose in answering what he justified in his request to return the case to the investigating judge within the documents of his appeal to the decision to seal the investigation.
• May 10, 2022: The Indictment Division of the Court of Appeal in Sousse decided to refer Ben Gharbia to the Criminal Division of the Primary Court in Sousse 1 after the partial cassation of the decision to seal the investigation related to the investigative file of Mehdi Ben Gharbia and directing charges of forgery and possession and use of a counterfeit to the deputy for the person concerned and to 7 other suspects along with confirming a charge of money laundering against Ben Gharbia according to what was confirmed by the official spokesman of the same court, Hadi Khsib. The court refused the release requests in favor of the two suspects detained in the case.
• May 10, 2022: A representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights visited Ben Gharbia in Messaadine prison in Tunis.