The Arab Spring’s only surviving democracy was supposed to be proof that the Middle East could produce something durable. Instead, Tunisia under Kais Saied has become a laboratory for a more sophisticated form of autocracy: one that destroys press freedom not with bullets, but with courtrooms.

The deteriorating condition of Mourad Zghidi, a French-Tunisian journalist now on a hunger strike after more than two years in Tunisian detention, crystallizes this dynamic with unusual clarity. Zghidi and his colleague Borhan Bsiss were arrested in May 2024 following television and radio commentary that Saied’s government interpreted as criticism of the president. A court sentenced them to three and a half years in prison. An appeals court confirmed that sentence in mid-May 2026. Zghidi’s lawyers have now declared his physical condition “extremely serious,” while his family is calling on both Tunis and Paris to secure his immediate release.

The case is disturbing not only in its particulars but in what it reveals about the mechanics of authoritarian consolidation. Zghidi and Bsiss were initially due to be released in January 2025, having served eight months. At precisely that moment, the Tunisian government opened fresh........

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