Arrested Pirate Party Member In Tunisia Freed, And Appointed State Secretary

from the of-youth-and-sports? dept

As the situation in Tunisia got worse and worse over the last few weeks, there was an increasing amount of political arrests. We had seen a few reports stating that three "Pirate Party members"/online activists had been arrested, but the details were lacking, and it wasn't entirely clear what the arrests were for, or if it really had anything to do with their online activities. However, it is interesting to see that with the new, transitional government trying to get up to speed, it's released all of the political prisoners, and even named one of the jailed Pirate Party members, Slim Amamou, as State Secretary of Youth and Sport. That's sort of an odd title (and there apparently is some confusion as to whether he's a "minister" or "state secretary," but it sounds like everything's in flux). As is pointed out on his Twitter profile, he's against censorship and intellectual property rights -- though it doesn't sound like he'll have much of a chance to impact policy in either area in this current role for the time being. Still, it'll be interesting to see if anything actually comes of this.

Filed Under: government, pirate party, slim amamou, tunisia