Tunisia: High Court rebukes police who turned rape victim into a defendant
Tunisia’s high court has ruled in favor of a gay man who ran afoul of police in 2017 when he filed a complaint that he had been raped. As their response to his rape complaint, police accused him with violating the country’s anti-homosexuality law.
The Tunisian Court of Cassation on Oct. 21 annulled the lower-count ruling and sent the case back for review.
“This decision confirms the universal right of every citizen to have recourse to justice and to assert his or her rights, within the framework of legal and judicial protection and within the framework of equality without discrimination based on sexual or gender identity,” said attorney Mounir Baatour, the founder of the controversial LGBTQ rights organization Shams, which sponsored the legal challenges.
The case began in 2017-2018, when M.R., a 27-year-old male nurse, complained to police that he had been raped by his former boyfriend. Police arrested the ex-boyfriend, but also demanded that M.R. undergo an anal examination, a discredited method of determining sexual orientation. Many human rights organizations have condemned anal exams as a form of torture.
M.R. was at risk of a three-year prison sentence if he were convicted a violating Tunisia’s anti-sodomy law, Article 230 of the penal code.
With help from Shams, M.R. fled the country for his safety.
The court’s ruling “guarantees each abused person their right to go to court without changing their legal status (from victim to accused)”, Baatour said.
