Two counts of Tunisia's prisoners, nearly double apart, and the league that would check is barred
Three deaths in custody in late July, a heatwave and the jailed Ennahdha leader's hunger strike have put Tunisia's prisons back in the news. The prisons authority says it took every measure the heat required, and denies reports that detainees' health deteriorated. The people who would normally check cannot: the justice ministry has barred the human rights league's monitoring visits.
Where they agree
The authority, the league and Haifa Chebbi all treat the heat inside the prisons in July and August 2026 as something that required action. Even the authority's denial is a list of what it says it did because of the exceptional temperatures. The justice ministry's investment programme and Ennahdha's demands do not mention the heat at all.
Where they split
The authority says medical care continued and family and lawyer visits never stopped. The league does not contest those visits; what it has lost are its own monitoring visits. The ministry answers with capacity: four building projects and 446 new posts. Capacity is the one thing Ennahdha does not ask for. Chebbi's account tests the authority's claim about housing, not its claim about visits: several detainees to sixteen square metres, without the two hours outside they are entitled to.
What nobody is saying
The prisons authority's 27 July statement carries no figure at all, and the ministry's programme is counted in buildings and posts, not people. The count Webdo cites, 33,000 detainees against 17,000 official places, comes from the research database World Prison Brief and describes May 2025. Chadi Trifi told Nawaat in August 2026 there are more than 60,000. Nobody says whether the two counts cover the same population.
In a statement reported on 27 July the authority says it took every measure the exceptional heat required inside the prisons, on housing and on medical care. It rejects the reports that some detainees' health had deteriorated and that family and lawyer visits had been stopped. Detainees who need specialist care go to the emergency wards of public hospitals when their condition demands it, the authority says.
Chadi Trifi says the league can no longer check whether those measures work: the justice ministry has barred it from the prisons, so it is running its own inquiry through the families. The league wants an urgent, independent and transparent investigation into the deaths. The presidential pardon of 2,439 detainees on 23 July is, he told Nawaat, a drop in the ocean; he puts the prison population at more than 60,000.
”On sait que ces dispositions existent. Mais à quel point fonctionnent-elles face à la canicule ? Nous l'ignorons, depuis que le ministère de la Justice nous a interdit la visite des établissements pénitentiaires”We know these measures exist. But how far do they work against the heatwave? We do not know, since the justice ministry barred us from visiting the prisons
Haifa Chebbi speaks from her visits to her father. Prison staff tell her he cannot be taken out into the yard after eleven in the morning, to spare him the heat. Families outside sit in full sun and, she says, can barely breathe.
”Mais que dire des prisonniers, de ce qu'ils ressentent en vivant à plusieurs dans seize mètres carrés, vingt-quatre heures sur vingt-quatre, sans pouvoir sortir dans la cour ? Ils ont pourtant droit à deux heures de sortie.”But what is there to say about the prisoners, about what they feel living several together in sixteen square metres, twenty-four hours a day, without being able to go out into the yard? They are entitled to two hours outside.
The ministry's 2026 investment programme answers the overcrowding with capacity: a new prison at Béja, a women's prison complex at Monastir, an extension of Borj Erroumi and a hospital unit at the La Rabta prison. Alongside the building, 446 prison corporals are to be recruited, out of 1,213 new posts across the justice budget.
Ennahdha's demands are about one prisoner. The party wants what it calls the isolation imposed on Rached Ghannouchi by the justice minister lifted, and visits from his lawyers and family as the law provides. It also demands his release, calling his detention arbitrary. It holds the authorities responsible for any deterioration in his health and says it has started legal action.