Hamma Hammami, a member of the Tunisian Workers’ Communist Party (PCOT), who was arrested on 14 February 1994 and tortured during incommunicado detention has been sentenced to terms of imprisonment following unfair trials. He is a prisoner of conscience. He was sentenced to five and a half years on 6 April in Sousse, although at the trial no convincing evidence was produced to substantiate the charges. In the second trial in Gabes on 7 April he was sentenced to four years and one months’ imprisonment on political charges. All the defence lawyers withdrew to protest at the court’s refusal to adjourn the trial in the absence of witnesses. Requests for independent medical examinations were ignored by the court and no investigation is known to have been carried out into the allegations of torture.
