Tunisia – Sousse: Eight-month prison sentences for 60 irregular sub-Saharan migrants

60 illegal sub-Saharan immigrant detainees appeared yesterday Wednesday before the first chamber of the Sousse court of first instance after the public prosecutor issued them with arrest warrants.

The chamber convicted 50 of them to 8 months in prison and deferred the hearing to a later date for the others, while maintaining them in detention, according to the official spokesperson for the court, Wissam Cherif.

Formerly, the prosecution at the Sousse court of first instance had charged these detainees, originally from Sudan and sub-Saharan Africa, with having entered Tunisia through points other than the border posts, with having stayed there illegally and with having joined a complex group likely to disturb public order and aiming to perpetrate crimes.

Security units in Sousse had carried out an extensive-scale security campaign which resulted in the arrest of a significant number of irregular migrants in the Msaken and Boukhzar areas.