On Dec. 11, only one day after the 69th anniversary of the UN General Assembly proclaiming the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a young man who was held at the Tunisian National Guard Center, a semi-military apparatus in El Aroussa town in Siliana governorate, faced a horrible death. The Ministry of Interior issued an official statement Dec. 11, saying, “The victim committed suicide [by strangling himself] with a thread from his coat.”

Despite the statement, the incident sparked wide protests in the town and led to clashes between the inhabitants and policemen. It seems torture is far from dead in Tunisia since the Jan. 14, 2011, revolution.

Monzer al-Sharni, the general secretary of the Tunisian Organization Against Torture, told Al-Monitor, “The horrible death at the Tunisian National Guard Center in El Aroussa proves that torture persists in Tunisia. Witnesses said the victim was tortured before his death. We do not know if he committed suicide or died after being tortured. The autopsy will show the results, but he was certainly beaten. The witnesses gave written testimonies to the judiciary and said they would hear the victim calling for help. We recorded other cases in Kram suburbs, north of the capital, and in Raf Raf city in the north also.”

In a related context, Fathi Jaray, the director of the National Prevention Against Torture Authority (INPT), a state institution, said in statements to the local radio station Jawhara Dec. 14, “The mistreatment and torture practices are ongoing in jails and detention centers.”