At moments she keeps her composure, but in other times she collapses.  She uses an assumed name since her family doesn’t know. This is how Mariam lives after having been raped by policemen.

“The charge made against me makes me feel like I’ve been raped all over again,” she says in a trembling voice, adding that those who have raped her are trying to convince the judiciary that she is involved in ‘professing indecency’.

Security above the law

At moments she keeps her composure, but in other times she collapses.  She uses an assumed name since her family doesn’t know. This is how Mariam lives after having been raped by policemen.

“The charge made against me makes me feel like I’ve been raped all over again,” she says in a trembling voice, adding that those who have raped her are trying to convince the judiciary that she is involved in ‘professing indecency’.

Security above the law

The incident took place on the night of the 3^rd of September when Mariam was with her fiancé in her own car, on their way back home after having dinner in Morsi suburb, north of Tunis.

While they were chatting, Mariam says, an Alfa Romeo car with three men in civilian clothes came suddenly upon them. They introduced themselves as policemen. “They first asked me and my fiancé why we were parking in such a desolate place late at night, then they started checking the car in search of alcohol or drugs.”

One of them, she explains, ordered her fiancé to get out, trying to blackmail him and forcing him to pay a considerable sum of money in return for releasing them. Her fiancé went with one of them to look for an ATM to pay the required amount, while the other remained with her, repeatedly raping her for one hour and a quarter.

The police then released her and her fiancé, who then went to the police station in Carthage Gardens to file a complaint.

A public opinion case

The case caused a great controversy in the society with all of its political, civil and human rights segments, especially after many known human rights activists appeared in the media and denounced the incident. For example, Radhia Nasraoui insisted that the girl was in a critical situation and that human rights in Tunisia were still threatened.

Public authorities were quick to open an investigation and the suspected policemen were referred to the magistrate at Chamber 13 in the Court of First Instance in Tunis. The magistrate then decided to imprison the two policemen for “having a sexual intercourse with a female without her consent, in abuse of their position” and jailed the third one for “bribery”.  The magistrate also charged Mariam with “professing indecency”.

Human rights activists and chairman of the National Council for Liberties in Tunisia, Sihem Bensedrine, said on the radio that the magistrate had put a set of pressures on the victim to drop the case and also threatened her of prosecution in the first hearing.

Many Tunisian organizations have emphasized that the judiciary is not independent and that the public prosecutor’s office is partial as it listened to the victim’s statements only once.

Members of the National Constituent Assembly have also expressed their interaction with the case. Kareema Swaid, a member for the Ettakatol Party, called upon its party to stop supporting the government, considering that the rape incident and the accusation made against the victim had simply gone too far.

Authorities suspect, forensic medicine confirms

Still stunned by the rape incident, the Tunisian public opinion had a greater shock when the spokesman of the Ministry of Interior (MoI), Khaled Tarroush, said that the suspected patrol had found the girl and her companion in an indecent position, calling for not using the incident politically and by the media.  This has been seen by many as a way to justify or inadequately criminalize the rape incident.

The attempts made by the official bodies, especially MoI, to protect and immunize the perpetrators at the expense of defaming Mariam have prompted her to think of committing suicide. “The rapists”, she says, “have entirely ruined my life. I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. And I won’t rest until they are punished. It’s a matter of life or death.”

In a video posted by the Ministry of Justice on its official Facebook page, the Minister of Justice, Noureddine Bhiri, a leader in the Islamic Ennahda Movement, says it is a fallacy to say the victim has been indicted, because the accused are still detained. “If she turned into a suspect, the defendants would be released.”

Bhiri has also denounced how some were quick to make statements that harm the judiciary and unfairly judge a judicial file without knowing its contents, which may confuse the judiciary and prevent it from performing its duties.

The victim’s lawyers said forensic medicine reports definitely confirm “ulceration in the vagina due to violent penetration without the girl’s consent.” The DNA analysis also confirms that the semen and tissue sampled from different spots, like from torn clothes, belong to the suspected policemen.  

The state apologizes

The presidency issued a statement on October 4, 2012 that the President, Moncef Marzouki, had received the victim and her fiancé, showing his absolute sympathy with them and pledging that the presidency would follow-up the case to avoid exploiting it politically and to serve justice.

Support and solidarity campaigns have spread across the globe, from Tunis all the way to the Louvre Museum in Paris where a group of topless female activists from the Ukrainian organization ‘Femen’ demonstrated with supporting and denouncing slogans on their bodies, such as “No and no” and “Yes for prosecuting the rapists”. They stood in front of the famous Greek statue ‘Venus de Milo’, and were photographed by cameras while their fists were up in the air in support of the raped Tunisian woman.

“Rape me! I’m a whore!” is a slogan that was placed on the famous statue, which is believed to embody Aphrodite the Goddess of Love in the Louvre, in reference to the rape and harassment suffered by women all over the world.