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TUNIS, Tunisia — Inside a prison visiting room in Tunis, nine-year-old Yassar Naouar is learning to hide his tears. Each time he goes to see his father, Wael, the boy tries to hold himself together, worried that his own distress would add to his father's pain. Only after leaving the building does he find a corner where he can finally cry.
Hichem Naouar, the boy's grandfather, says Yassar has changed noticeably since Wael was detained. The child now sleeps beside his mother after waking up screaming in the night, and his school results have slipped. At one point Yassar came home upset because other children at school kept asking whether his father was a thief. When his mother asked him what he thought about that, the boy answered without hesitation: "Never."
Wael's youngest child, four-year-old Sumud, is too young to understand why her father is behind bars. Hichem took her to visit him. When she saw Wael on the other side of the glass partition, she leaned forward to try to embrace him and struck her head against the barrier.
Speaking to Al Jazeera on Wednesday outside the Tunis Court of Appeal, where he had gone to follow the latest legal challenge to Wael's detention, Hichem repeatedly choked back emotion as he described the state his son-in-law is in. Wael was sitting with one hand pressed against his cheek, his elbow trembling and his gaze fixed somewhere in the distance, Hichem said. He was struggling to see clearly and to keep water down without vomiting. He was dizzy and had difficulty controlling his left leg. Wael later told Hichem that other prisoners had told him he sometimes wakes in the middle of the night calling out the name of his youngest daughter.
For Hichem, Wael's case is also a story of character. He recalled an incident during the Sumud land convoy in Libya in May, when armed men attempted to kidnap another participant. Wael intervened, pulled the man away and helped him escape, then returned to the group and told the men they could take him instead. During the first Sumud flotilla, Hichem added, a woman fell into the sea and came close to drowning — Wael jumped in after her and pulled her out.
"Wael's strength is in the strength of his ideas and in his commitment to his people. Whenever he heard about any injustice against workers or employees, you would always find him at the forefront," Hichem said.
Health has become the sharpest concern of the campaign's legal battle. Wael, 41, began a hunger strike on August 16 to protest his continued detention and was transferred to a hospital as his condition deteriorated. He called off the strike after 38 days following appeals from his lawyers and supporters, saying that suspending it did not mean he was abandoning his demands.
Wael Naouar, Ghassan Henchiri, Ghassan Boughdiri and Nabil Channoufi have been held since March following an investigation by Tunisia's Economic and Financial Judicial Pole, a specialised body handling financial and economic crimes. The inquiry concerns alleged irregularities in money raised for the Global Sumud Flotilla, an international campaign seeking to deliver aid to Gaza and challenge Israel's blockade of the Palestinian territory. The state-owned TAP news agency, citing judicial sources, reported that investigators are examining both the origin of the funds collected and how they were spent, including whether any were diverted to other purposes.
The four activists and their defence team have consistently denied wrongdoing and say they are innocent. None has been convicted. For their lawyers, the central question is not only what the investigation finds, but why the men should remain in prison at all while it continues.
"The extension is an exception to the exception," said Ghassan Ghribi, a member of the defence committee, arguing that freedom should be the rule and detention the exception. "The investigating judge spent six months on the case without carrying out any investigative work, other than questioning the activists." Ghribi said any extension should rest on clear, demonstrable reasons, and that the four men were being made to pay the price for what he described as a failure to investigate.
The Court of Appeal in Tunis rejected the defence challenge on Wednesday, leaving the quartet in pretrial detention for another four months while the investigation proceeds. Henchiri, Boughdiri and Channoufi remain on hunger strike.
Tunisian authorities have framed the case strictly as a financial investigation into the handling of funds raised for the flotilla, rather than a prosecution targeting the men's political or pro-Palestinian activism. The government has rejected accusations that the judiciary is being used to silence opponents, stating that the judiciary is independent and that legal proceedings are carried out in accordance with the law.
The fallout has extended well beyond the original four. Fourteen people detained after a September 19 protest calling for the activists' release have since been placed in pretrial detention, lawyer Rafed Rabbeh confirmed to Al Jazeera on Friday. Among them is a 17-year-old who was brought before a juvenile judge — a situation that sits uneasily with Tunisia's Child Protection Code, which says priority should be given to preventive and educational measures and that pretrial detention should be avoided as much as possible for children.
Rabbeh said those detainees face a range of charges, including taking part in a gathering allegedly intended to disturb public order and commit an offence, publicly attributing unlawful acts to a public official without proof, and making public statements deemed to damage the reputation of a person or official body. The charges are drawn from several provisions of Tunisia's Penal Code.
For the families of those still striking, the immediate focus remains medical rather than legal. Speaking by phone from Gafsa, Sebti, the father of Ghassan Henchiri, said his son remains conscious but visibly exhausted after going on hunger strike on September 9.
"According to what his sister told me after visiting him, he is still holding up. The fatigue is visible. He is exhausted, but he is still conscious," Sebti said.
Sebti added that his son has not been taken out of prison for the further medical examination he needs for a head injury sustained during his detention in Israel. He said Ghassan and his family have raised the issue both with the prison administration and with the investigating judge, and have been told an examination would take place. As the appeal failed and the hunger strikes continued, the relatives of the four men say the physical cost of pretrial detention is mounting in plain view, even as the legal questions they raised remain unanswered.
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