France Deports Tunisian Man Convicted of Terrorism Despite Risk of Torture in Tunisia
Mohamed El-Fahem was expelled immediately after his prison release, despite prior court warnings of serious risk of torture and injustice in Tunisia.
Watan-France on Friday deported a Tunisian national convicted of “membership in a terrorist group” immediately after his release from prison, despite what his French lawyers described as a “very serious risk of torture” in his home country.
According to a statement by his lawyers Raphaël Kempf, Léo Bouscely, and Romain Ruiz:“At dawn this morning, the Ministry of the Interior deported our client, Mohamed El-Fahem, to Tunisia after he was taken into custody upon leaving prison, like several others. We have had no news of him since.”
Mohamed El-Fahem, 35, is wanted in Tunisia on terrorism charges and was sentenced in absentia to 132 years in prison.
His deportation comes just one day before France’s Council of State was scheduled to examine a request to suspend the deportation order against him.
In January, the Paris Court of Appeal advised against extraditing El-Fahem to Tunisian authorities, stating that doing so would “expose him to a real and serious risk of flagrant denial of justice.” The court further noted that he faced a “real risk of being tortured” if returned to Tunisia.
His lawyers stated:“El-Fahem was deported before the Council of State had time to register the appeal and before the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) could intervene to protect his rights.”
El-Fahem had reportedly joined ISIS in Raqqa, Syria in 2014, but left the group in 2015 and later sought refuge in Germany.
He was arrested in France in October 2019, and in December 2023, a Paris court sentenced him to six years in prison for “membership in a terrorist group,” along with an order to leave French territory permanently and a lifetime ban on reentry.
