The detention of Sihem Bensedrine, human rights activist and former president of the Truth & Dignity Commission, is a further blow to the regime’s opponents.

With act after act, Tunisia’s President Kais Saied is trampling underfoot all the achievements of the democratic transition that followed the 2011 revolution. The latest symbol is the detention of Sihem Bensedrine, one of the country’s leading figures in the fight for human rights, on Thursday, August 1.

At 73, Bensedrine has been caught up in the justice system for her role as president of the Truth & Dignity Commission (IVD), which she held from 2014 to 2018. This independent body had been created as part of the 2011 post-revolution transitional justice process to shed light on human rights violations under the regimes of Habib Bourguiba and Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. The former head of the body is accused of “obtaining unjustified advantages,” “causing prejudice to the State” and “falsification” for changes made to the IVD’s final report, before its official publication. She faces life imprisonment.

A former journalist, figurehead of Tunisia’s feminist movement in the late 1970s and human rights activist, Bensedrine had opposed Mr. Ben Ali’s regime, which imprisoned her for several weeks in the early 2000s. Elected head of the IVD in 2014, she came in for much criticism during her tenure, both from political leaders hostile to the transitional justice process and for the management of her administration.