Taken Question from the April 3 Daily Press Briefing : Tunisia: Release of Political Prisoners

Answer: On February 26, the Government of Tunisia announced that it had freed 1,298 prisoners and granted conditional parole to 359 others. Some of these 1657 prisoners, including 70 members of the banned An-Nahda party, the editor of the Islamist newspaper Al-Fajr, and two groups of youths condemned to long prison terms after looking at suspect websites, had been described by human rights NGO’s and independent political observers as political prisoners.