Missing journalists: Tunisia’s Arab Spring meets Libya’s

Sofiane Chourabi, a Tunisian journalist
emblematic of Tunisia’s struggle for free speech and media independence, and
his cameraman, Nadhir Ktari, have been missing since an unidentified
group reportedly seized them in Libya last September.

On April 29, Libyan officials in
the internationally recognised government announced
that “terrorist elements” had executed the two men in addition to a crew from
Libya’s al-Barqa Television, based, they said, on the confessions of captured
militants. Tunisia’s National Union of Journalists has insisted
on seeing proof of their death before accepting the news.

May 3 is World Press Freedom Day.
In 2014, 61 journalists were
killed worldwide, almost half of them in the Middle East, according to the
Committee to Protect Journalists. In Syria alone about 20 are currently
missing.

Chourabi worked for two
low-circulation Tunisian opposition newspapers in the 2000s. But it was in the
later years of that decade that he gained prominence as a blogger who defied the
authoritarian regime of President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, openly posting his name and picture beside
his online tirades against the government’s censorship
of the media and the web.

Chourabi, born in Slimane in
1982, did not confine himself to virtual activism. When the young street vendor
Mohamed Bouazizi set himself alight in December 2010 to protest police
harassment, Chourabi was among the first journalists to cover the street
protests that erupted. That made him a key player in the synergism between
social media and the popular uprising that toppled Ben Ali weeks later.

After the uprising, Chourabi became
a familiar television
commentator and sturdy defender
of secularism as a resurgent Islamist party and Salafists asserted
themselves. When a court in 2012 sentenced an atheist, Jabeur
Mejri, to seven years in prison for a blog post
deemed to mock Islam, Chourabi commented:

“Tunisia’s new rulers, who have
experienced the pain of prisons and detention centers, and suffered from
constant surveillance, are the ones who now bless throwing a young man in
prison merely for expressing his opinion.”

In 2012, police arrested
Chourabi and a friend for drinking alcohol on a beach. Some saw the arrest
as a reprisal for his critical views and reporting on the Islamist-led interim
government. The court convicted and fined them for “public drunkenness” and
“offending public morals.”

Chourabi took on reporting
assignments for France 24 television among others, and developed a passion for
investigative reporting, of which Tunisia’s state-cowed media had no tradition. In May 2013, Ettounsiyya TV aired
a piece of critical reporting
by Chourabi that Tunisia’s security forces disputed, especially its contention that
smugglers were able to operate virtually unchallenged across the Tunisian-Algerian
border.

In June 2013, an investigative
judge questioned Chourabi on charges stemming from this piece, of “complicity
in disseminating false information likely to harm the public order” and “falsely
alleging a crime.” The case remains pending, according to Souhaib Bahri,
Chourabi’s lawyer.

Lina Ben Mhenni, Chourabi’s
friend and fellow blogger, describes him as fearless. This is perhaps the trait
that had led him in 2010, to rush to Sidi Bouzid shortly after the young street
vendor set himself on fire, and to strife-torn Libya in September 2014. The trip was for First TV, a
new, independent broadcaster for which Chourabi produced the “Dossiyet” (Files)
program. He intended to investigate the impact of Libya’s internal strife on its
economic relations with Tunisia, the station’s deputy director, Raouf Saad,
told us.

Tunisia had by then adopted a
new constitution and was soon to hold its first democratic elections, whereas Libya’s
transition was in chaos. The optimism in Libya generated by the ousting of Muammar
Qaddafi in 2011 has long since evaporated amid continuing conflict and division.

Two rival governments claim legitimacy,
armed militias control parts of the country, and the judicial system is
dysfunctional. These conditions have allowed armed groups, including some that claim
allegiance to the extremist group Islamic State (also known as ISIS), to grow
and flourish and commit appalling crimes, such as abduction and broadcasting beheadings
of Egyptian
and Ethiopian
Christians.

Chourabi and Ktari, his
cameraman, headed to Libya at a time when few western journalists travelled
there anymore, due to the security situation and diminished interest abroad in
the country. But for the Tunisian media, ignoring Libya was not an option: the
two countries share historic links, economic ties, and a long, porous border.

News reports suggest that the
security situation in Libya has allowed weapons to flow easily across the
border and afforded a rear base
for Tunisian armed groups that have carried out killings both in Libya and at
home.

Ktari started working as a
cameraman in 2011, first for Nessma TV, then Tounesna TV. “I recommended Ktari
to Sofiane because he needed a cameraman who was courageous to accompany him,”
Oussama Saafi, a journalist at first TV, told us.

The details of what happened to Chourabi
and Ktari when they reached Libya remain sketchy. They first lost touch with
the TV station on 3 September, near the city of Brega, apparently held by
unknown forces that freed them on 7 September. But only a day later, an
unidentified group seized them near Ajdabiya, according to the Facebook page
of Tunisia’s Foreign Affairs Ministry, and since then, their fate has remained
uncertain.

On January 8, a website linked
to armed groups published a
statement purportedly issued by the “Province of Barqa,” a group that claims
allegiance to Islamic State, announcing that it had executed Chourabi and Ktari
because they “worked for a satellite station that fought religion.”

The communiqué included photos
of the two men but provided no evidence of their deaths. Libyan
and Tunisian
officials have made vague statements since January affirming their efforts on
behalf of Chourabi and Ktari, but no further information surfaced until April
29.

Meanwhile, the situation for
Libyan journalists grows increasingly precarious: unidentified assailants have
killed nine
of them in separate incidents since 2013, including Muftah al-Qatrani, a
television journalist gunned
down in Bengazi on April 23. If the Libyan statement of April 29 proves
accurate, unidentified militants have also killed a crew from Barqa television consisting
of four Libyans and one Egyptian.

Around Tunis, billboards showing
their faces proclaim, “Sofiane Chourabi, Nadhir Ktari, our hearts are with
you.” Libyan and Tunisian authorities should spare no effort to verify the fate
of the two journalists.

The two men are, in their way, the
best of post-Ben Ali Tunisia: they risked their lives to inform the public at a
time when the possibility of informing the public had finally become a reality.