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Tunisia: Liberation correspondent assaulted by police during a demonstration

2022-01-15T10:17:37.075Z


The correspondent of the daily Liberation in Tunisia was brutalized by police on Friday and prevented from covering a demonstration against...


The correspondent of the daily Liberation in Tunisia was brutalized by police on Friday and prevented from covering a demonstration against President Kais Saied, denounced the French newspaper and the association of foreign correspondents in North Africa.

“While he was covering a demonstration against President Kaïs Saïed on Friday, our correspondent Mathieu Galtier was violently beaten by several police officers.

The management of the newspaper strongly condemns this attack”

, reacted Liberation on its site.

Demonstrations were organized in the Tunisian capital against the president on Friday, also marking the 11th anniversary of the fall of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. The rallies, banned by the government, were brutally dispersed by the security forces, giving rise to scenes of violence rarely seen in the capital. “

Mathieu Galtier was filming the muscular arrest of a demonstrator with his mobile phone when he was attacked by a uniformed policeman,

” reports Liberation.

The correspondent, quoted by the newspaper, explains that he immediately identified himself as a journalist in French and Arabic, while the policeman tried to take his phone.

The journalist then saw himself “lifted and dragged between two vans”.

“They started hitting me all over the place, I was on the ground, curled up in a fetal position, I was shouting that I was a journalist.

One of them sprayed me with gas at close range.

They kicked me.

Finally, they took my phone, my press card and they left me there,”

he says.

Unprecedented violence

Once treated by the firefighters, the correspondent indicates that his belongings were returned to him, with the exception of the memory card of his telephone on which his images and videos were recorded. The journalist, who has been living in Tunisia for six years, has been prescribed "fifteen days off". A doctor noted in particular "+ a scratch of 10 centimeters in diameter + on the forehead".

The Association of Foreign Correspondents in North Africa (NAFCC) also condemns in a press release

"the violence exerted by the security forces on the journalists who covered the mobilizations"

in Tunis where "a level of violence never known since the creation of NAFCC in 2014”.

"A photographer was beaten up and a video journalist was hustled and prevented from filming

," adds the association, which is asking for an investigation to be opened "without delay".

Source: lefigaro

All news articles on 2022-01-15

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