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Tunisia has replaced imprisonment with a 10,000–20,000 Tunisian-dinar fine for a first offence under Article 24 of Decree-Law 54. The amendment, published on 30 September 2026, does not repeal the article or remove the kinds of online content and alleged harms it covers. Repeat offences still carry six months in prison and a 50,000-dinar fine, with penalties doubled when the target is a public official or equivalent.
What changed in Article 24?
Decree-Law No. 1 of 2026 replaced Article 24 of Decree-Law 54. La Presse reported that it appeared in issue 96 of Tunisia’s Official Gazette on 30 September; Al Jazeera reported that it took effect the same day. The penalty now depends on whether the offence is a first or repeat offence.
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| Case | Penalty under the amended Article 24 |
|---|---|
| First offence | A fine of 10,000–20,000 Tunisian dinars replaces imprisonment, according to La Presse’s 30 September 2026 report on the Gazette amendment. |
| Repeat offence | Six months in prison and a 50,000-dinar fine, according to the same report. |
| Target is a public official or equivalent | The penalties are doubled, according to La Presse’s report. The report does not specify how that rule is applied to each penalty in an individual case. |
This is a change to Article 24’s penalty regime, not an abolition of Decree-Law 54. The reported amendment retains the article’s offence categories.
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What conduct does the article still cover?
As summarized by La Presse, Article 24 continues to address intentionally producing, disseminating, publishing, sending or preparing specified false news, data or rumours, as well as fabricated, falsified or falsely attributed documents, for listed harmful purposes. A separate paragraph concerns publishing specified fabricated or falsified content, personal data or inaccurate allegations with purposes that include defamation, reputational or material or moral harm, incitement to aggression, or hate speech.
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Those descriptions are a summary of La Presse’s account of the revised provision, not a substitute for its full Arabic text. The amendment changes the first-offence consequence, but the broad categories and alleged purposes in the article remain part of the law.
Why did the amendment draw attention now?
Al Jazeera reported that civil-society groups, spearheaded by Tunisia’s largest labour union, announced plans for a nationwide march over restrictions on civil liberties hours before the amendment took effect. It placed the change amid demonstrations concerning abuses of power, political freedoms and deteriorating living standards. That timing provides political context; it does not establish that the protests caused the government to amend the decree.
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The change also arrived amid disagreement over how the decree has been used. In November 2025, Justice Minister Leila Jaffel said nobody had been prosecuted under the decree because of opinions or freedom of expression, and described Article 24 as targeting defamation, distortion of facts, rumours and false news. That is the minister’s stated position, reported by La Presse/TAP—not an independently established finding about every prosecution.
Why do critics say the change may not be enough?
The scope remains contested
ARTICLE 19’s 2023 analysis of the earlier version of Article 24 warned that its language could make it difficult for people to predict what conduct was criminalized, and that broad disinformation offences risk being used against journalists, political opponents and human-rights defenders. That assessment concerned the prior text; it is not a direct legal analysis of the September 2026 amendment.
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Amnesty International’s 24 January 2025 urgent action described journalist Mohamed Boughalleb’s case and argued that ambiguous terms such as “fake news” failed standards of legality, necessity and proportionality. The account is historical and should not be read as an update on his current case status.
Journalists were still being prosecuted during a reported period
Al Jazeera reported that the National Syndicate of Tunisian Journalists (SNJT) counted 14 journalist prosecutions, six under Decree 54, from April 2025 through April 2026. The SNJT’s 2025 Freedom Report called for abolishing custodial penalties for online publishing offences under the decree, using existing press legislation, and asking judicial authorities to stop referring journalists for prosecution under it. The 14-case figure is the SNJT count relayed by Al Jazeera for that period; it is not a total count of all people prosecuted under Decree 54.
The penalty change does not settle the enforcement debate
Said Benarbia, Middle East and North Africa director of the International Commission of Jurists, called the reduction in penalties a “positive development” in comments to Al Jazeera, while arguing that ending abusive prosecutions and releasing people arbitrarily detained under the decree were still necessary. He also described the decree as “one of the potent tools of oppression used by the government to crush dissent, crack down on civic space and arbitrarily restrict the freedom of expression in the country.” These are Benarbia’s advocacy assessments, not court findings.
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For a first offence, the change is concrete: Article 24 now specifies a fine rather than imprisonment. But the amendment leaves the offence categories in place, while the law’s breadth and its application to expression remain disputed. The published change alone therefore does not resolve the competing claims about how the decree affects journalism and civil liberties.
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