Tunisian courts have maintained on appeal a six-year prison sentence for Halima Ben Ali, daughter of former president Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, in a financial crimes case.
The specialised criminal chamber for corruption cases in Tunisia confirmed on Tuesday, May 5, the six-year prison sentence of Halima Ben Ali, according to reports in several local media outlets.
Prosecuted for financial offenses, the 33-year-old has thus seen her sentence upheld on appeal, without any official statement detailing the specific charges.
The verdict is part of ongoing legal proceedings initiated in 2018, when Halima Ben Ali’s name surfaced in several cases related to financial malfeasance attributed to associates of the former regime.
Her lawyers, in both France and Tunisia, contest the validity of the charges, arguing that she was a minor at the time of the alleged offenses and that no active role can be attributed to her.
The case has taken on a transnational dimension due to the convicted woman’s current situation.
Having left Tunisia during the 2011 revolution at the age of 17, Halima Ben Ali has resided abroad ever since.
Arrested last September at a Parisian airport as she was about to travel to Dubai, she was the subject of an extradition request from Tunisian authorities. In early April, the French courts rejected this request, thus blocking any extradition to Tunisian authorities at this stage.
This legal development comes alongside other decisions targeting figures from the former presidential circle. Imed Trabelsi, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali’s son-in-law, was recently sentenced to five years in prison by the same court for similar financial crimes.
Already imprisoned since January 2011, he has accumulated several sentences handed down in separate cases.
These proceedings illustrate the continuation, more than a decade after the fall of the regime, of legal actions initiated by Tunisia against members of the former government.
They are part of an institutional effort to address corruption cases inherited from the pre-2011 period, even though their implementation remains hampered by international legal challenges and limitations related to the absence of some defendants from the country.
MK/AK/Sf/fss/as/APA