Tunisia's president Moncef Marzouki said on Wednesday he would
free a young Tunisian man jailed last year for posting cartoons of the Prophet
Mohammed online once tensions in the country had eased.
Jabbeur Mejri was sentenced at a closed hearing in March 2012 to
seven and half years in jail for posting caricatures of the Prophet on his
Facebook page.
He petitioned the president for a pardon earlier this year, saying
he regretted his actions.
"I will have him freed. I am just waiting for the political
situation to calm down," Marzouki said in an interview with French radio
station France Info.
"There are currently huge tensions, there is the fight
against terrorism," he said.
"But I will free him, I am simply waiting for the right
window of opportunity both for his security and for the security of the
country."
Mejri and his co-defendant Ghazi Beji, both unemployed and
militant atheists, were charged with "publishing works likely to disturb
public order" and "offence to public decency".
Beji fled abroad and was given asylum in France in June this year.
The case stirred up controversy in Tunisia, with secular
opposition groups and human rights activists arguing that the defendants were
convicted for a "crime of conscience".
Tunisia has been mired in political stalemate after the
assassination of two prominent opposition leaders by suspected jihadists
earlier this year.
Critics of the Islamist party Ennahda, which heads the coalition
government, have repeatedly accused it of seeking to Islamise society and of
using religion to stifle freedom of expression.
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