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To the dismissal was added opprobrium. Revoked by Tunisian President Kaïs Saïed on Wednesday 1er June with 56 of his fellow magistrates, Keira Ben Khelifa has been the object, since the beginning of the month, of an online harassment campaign. The judge saw her private life unpacked on social networks, and in particular the extramarital affair, which led to her being accused of“contempt of morals”. A reason invoked by President Kaïs Saïed himself.
The case that took hold of the Web dates back to 2020. The judge, who has since confided in local media, explains that she welcomed a man with whom she had an affair into her home one evening. The wife of the latter, who sought to prove her husband’s adultery, warned the police. An intervention that had legal consequences and forced Keira Ben Khelifa to submit to a virginity test. In Tunisia, adultery is punishable by five years’ imprisonment and contempt of morals by one year according to the Penal Code.
The file was eventually closed, but its contents conveniently resurfaced on the Internet Saturday, June 6 when Thameur Bdida, a blogger claiming to belong to the July 25 Movement favorable to Kaïs Saïed, made public the minutes of the case, the personal data of Keira Ben Khelifa and even his medical examination of virginity… The commentator also claimed that another dismissed magistrate was involved in a case of adultery. Documents and statements that have since circulated extensively on social networks.
“It is psychological violence and an incredible humiliation for these women”underlines the activist and lawyer Bochra Belhaj Hmida. “Under the regime of Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali, there were gutter newspapers that published scandalous cases fabricated from scratch or defamatory against women from the political opposition or activists, but today, with the social networks, this kind of thing takes on a whole new dimension”she explains.
“Medieval Methods”
“The fact that women’s bodies are instrumentalized in this way and their private lives speaks volumes about the archaism of our society”, laments the historian specializing in feminist issues, Dalenda Largueche, deploring that the president mentioned, in his speech announcing the dismissal of judges, the case of a magistrate “caught in the act of committing a sex scandal”. Kaïs Saïed, recalls the researcher, has never hidden his conservatism on these issues: in August 2020, a year after his election, he had buried the project of equality between men and women carried by his predecessor, the late Béji Caïd Essebsi, preferring the notions of justice and equity promoted by Islamic law.
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