This project seeks to enhance detainees’ rights in Tunisia by expanding access to legal aid and improving enforcement of detainee rights in Tunisia.
In 2016, Tunisia passed wide-ranging reforms of its Criminal Procedure Code (CPC).
Act 2016-5 (Law 5) enacting article 13 of the CPC
gave arrestees in police custody the right to legal counsel and significantly reduced the duration of legal pre-charge detention from 72 to 48 hours.
By the order of public prosecutor and when justified, pre-charge detention could be extended with 48 hours for felonies and 24 hours for misdemeanors.
In parallel, the anti-terrorism law of 2015 allows prosecutors and police to hold suspects for the first 48 hours without access to a lawyer and extends the duration of pre-charge custody to five days extendable two times for a total of 15 days.
Since Law 5 came into force, its application has been uneven.
This project seeks to ensure that the rights granted to civilians in Tunisia by Law 5 and criminal procedures proposing alternatives to detention, inter alia, bail provisions, are enforced consistently during the pre-trial phase.