By Tarek Amara

TUNIS (Reuters) -In May 2024, Tunisian activist Cherifa Riahi was arrested just two months after giving birth, accused of harbouring illegal migrants. Over a year later, she is still in prison without charge.

Rights groups see Riahi's case as a symbol of accelerating repression of civil society under President Kais Saied, who dissolved parliament in 2021 and began ruling by decree.

The crackdown marks a significant turnaround for Tunisia, where civil society groups flourished in the wake of the 2011 uprising that unseated President Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali, inspired other Arab Spring uprisings, and helped shape a democratic transition.

As head of a refugee support group, Riahi had been helping sub-Saharan asylum seekers and other migrants find housing and access medicine and food. Her family says she did nothing wrong.

The forced separation from her daughter and young son has been traumatic.

"The girl doesn't recognise her mother at all," Riahi's mother Farida, who is now caring for her grandchild, told Reuters at their family home in La Marsa near the capital, Tunis.

"They took her while she was breastfeeding. We didn't even have time to understand what was........

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