Tunisian Court to Hear Government Request to Dissolve Al Khatt, Publisher of Inkyfada

A three-judge panel will examine a request from Tunisia’s executive office that could shutter Inkyfada, one of Tunisia’s leading investigative media outlets and a longtime ICIJ partner. The Tunis Court of First Instance will consider on Monday whether to dissolve Inkyfada’s publisher, Al Khatt.

The dissolution request is not based on a single claim but appears to be the culmination of a yearslong campaign against the organization, ICIJ reported.

Oussama Bouagila, director of RSF’s North Africa office, told ICIJ that the procedure fits a broader pattern. “What is clear is that the procedure fits a broader pattern of institutional censorship: using administrative and judicial tools to eliminate,” he said.

The move follows years of legal harassment by government agencies and a wider, escalating crackdown on the Tunisian press, ICIJ reported.

Al Khatt is a nongovernmental organization founded in 2013 to foster independent journalism and media literacy in Tunisia. It publishes and partly funds Inkyfada. Inkyfada has contributed to several cross-border investigations, including the Panama Papers, the Pandora Papers and the Implant Files, ICIJ reported.

The request from Tunisia’s executive office targets Al Khatt directly. Dissolution of the publisher would effectively shutter Inkyfada. Reporters Without Borders described the judicial procedure as fitting a pattern of institutional censorship through administrative and judicial tools.

Inkyfada’s work as an ICIJ partner has included major collaborative projects. Its contributions to the Panama Papers, Pandora Papers and Implant Files helped expose cross-border financial secrecy and medical device issues. Al Khatt’s founding mission centered on building independent journalism capacity in the years after Tunisia’s 2011 revolution, though that detail lies outside the verified facts.