TV talk-show host Amer Ayad was expecting a backlash after he used his platform to portray Tunisia¡¯s president as an aspiring dictator. But even he was stunned by its severity.
Police seized him from his home in his pajamas, bundled him at dawn into a car in front of his wife and young sons, and hauled him before a military court, where he was charged with defaming President Kais Saied and damaging the army¡¯s morale. He was in jail for seven weeks.
¡°I knew then that the coup had begun to enact its dictatorial project,¡± recalled Ayad, who was detained for his on-air recital of an Iraqi poem whose author dreams of questioning a tyrant. Months after his Oct. 3 arrest, he¡¯s back home in the Mediterranean city of Monastir, awaiting trial and banned from international travel.
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