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Tunisia Court Extends Prison Term for Nabil Karoui

Nabil Karoui. AFP file photo
Nabil Karoui. AFP file photo
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Tunisia Court Extends Prison Term for Nabil Karoui

Nabil Karoui. AFP file photo
Nabil Karoui. AFP file photo

A Tunisian corruption court tripled the prison term facing a businessman who challenged President Kais Saied in the 2019 presidential election.
Nabil Karoui — a populist media mogul who has been plagued by charges since being imprisoned in the lead-up to that election — was sentenced on Friday to three years behind bars. The court's spokesperson said he was charged with unlawfully receiving more than $1 million in foreign funds to bankroll his campaign.
Karoui is among the many prominent figures from business and politics who have been targeted in investigations of corruption, foreign funding and undermining state security.
Facing a raft of charges, he crossed from Tunisia to Algeria in 2021, where he was arrested and later fled. His whereabouts are unknown.
Karoui was originally sentenced to one year in prison but the term was tripled after Tunisia’s public prosecutor filed an appeal. Karoui will also be ineligible to run for office for five years.
Karoui founded Tunisian television channel Nessma TV and headed what was once one of the country's largest political parties. He was arrested and imprisoned in the middle of his 2019 campaign season on suspicion of money laundering but released before election day.

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Women and Children Scavenge for Food in Gaza, UN Official Says

Palestinians walk on a destroyed street after Israeli forces withdrew from a part of Nuseirat, following a ground operation amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Nuseirat, central Gaza Strip, November 29, 2024. (Reuters)
Palestinians walk on a destroyed street after Israeli forces withdrew from a part of Nuseirat, following a ground operation amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Nuseirat, central Gaza Strip, November 29, 2024. (Reuters)
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Women and Children Scavenge for Food in Gaza, UN Official Says

Palestinians walk on a destroyed street after Israeli forces withdrew from a part of Nuseirat, following a ground operation amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Nuseirat, central Gaza Strip, November 29, 2024. (Reuters)
Palestinians walk on a destroyed street after Israeli forces withdrew from a part of Nuseirat, following a ground operation amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Nuseirat, central Gaza Strip, November 29, 2024. (Reuters)

Large groups of women and children are scavenging for food among mounds of trash in parts of the Gaza Strip, a UN official said on Friday following a visit to the Palestinian enclave.

Ajith Sunghay, head of the UN Human Rights office for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, expressed concern about the levels of hunger, even in areas of central Gaza where aid agencies have teams on the ground.

"I was particularly alarmed by the prevalence of hunger," Sunghay told a Geneva press briefing via video link from Jordan. "Acquiring basic necessities has become a daily, dreadful struggle for survival."

Sunghay said the UN had been unable to take any aid to northern Gaza, where he said an estimated 70,000 people remain following "repeated impediments or rejections of humanitarian convoys by the Israeli authorities".

Sunghay visited camps for people recently displaced from parts of northern Gaza. They were living in horrendous conditions with severe food shortages and poor sanitation, he said.

"It is so obvious that massive humanitarian aid needs to come in – and it is not. It is so important the Israeli authorities make this happen," he said. He did not specify the last time UN agencies had sent aid to northern Gaza.

US WARNING

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin set out steps last month for Israel to carry out in 30 days to address the situation in Gaza, warning that failure to do so may have consequences on US military aid to Israel.

The State Department said on Nov. 12 that President Joe Biden's administration had concluded that Israel was not currently impeding assistance to Gaza and therefore was not violating US law.

The Israeli army, which began its offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip after the group's attack on southern Israeli communities in October 2023, said its operating in northern Gaza since Oct. 5 were trying to prevent militants regrouping and waging attacks from those areas.

Israel's government body that oversees aid, Cogat, says it facilitates the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza, and accuses UN agencies of not distributing it efficiently.

Looting has also depleted aid supplies within the Gaza Strip, with nearly 100 food aid trucks raided on Nov. 16.

"The women I met had all either lost family members, were separated from their families, had relatives buried under rubble, or were themselves injured or sick," Sunghay said of his stay in the Gaza Strip.

"Breaking down in front of me, they desperately pleaded for a ceasefire."