A French student who was arrested and detained in Tunisia returns to Paris

PARIS — (AP) — A French doctoral student detained in Tunisia returned to Paris on Friday after weeks of top-level diplomatic discussions.

Victor Dupont, a 27-year-old pursuing a Ph.D. at Aix-Marseille University’s Institute of Research and Study on the Arab and Islamic Worlds, arrived at Charles de Gaulle Airport on Friday afternoon, 27 days after he was arrested in Tunis.

“Obviously, we welcome this outcome for him and, most of all, we welcome that he is able to reunite with his loved ones here in France,” French Foreign Ministry spokesman Christophe Lemoine said.

He announced the release at a ministry news briefing on Friday, saying that Dupont was freed Tuesday from prison and returned on Friday back to France.

Tunisian authorities in recent years have arrested journalists, activists and opposition figures, but Dupont's arrest garnered international attention and condemnation because of his nationality and because he wasn't known as a critic of the government.

Dupont researches social movements, youth unemployment and Tunisia’s 2011 revolution. Three other French nationals were also arrested Oct. 19 in front of Dupont's Tunis apartment. At least two were subsequently released. The whereabouts of the third person, a woman with dual French-Tunisian citizenship, weren’t immediately clear Friday.

Tunisian authorities have not commented on any of the arrests.

Dupont's arrest provoked concerns about the safety and security of foreign researchers in Tunisia, where rights and freedoms have gradually been curtailed under President Kais Saied.

Saied harnessed populist anger to win two terms as president of Tunisia and has reversed many of the democratic gains that were made after the country became the first to topple a longtime dictator in 2011 during the regional uprisings known as the Arab Spring.

Dupont's supporters, both at his university and in associations representing academics who work in the Middle East and North Africa, said that his research didn't pose any security risks, called the charges unfounded and decried authorities' choice to charge him in military court.

“It has no connection with foreign powers or foreign affairs and presents no threat whatsoever to the security of the Tunisian state. Rather, Dupont’s arrest highlights the constraints on academic freedom in Tunisia today and poses a dangerous precedent for the future of social scientific investigation in the country,” Asli Bali, Yale Law School professor and president of the Middle East Studies Association, wrote in a Nov. 9 letter to authorities.

Tunisia and France have maintained close political and economic ties since Tunisia became independent after 75 years of being a French protectorate. France is Tunisia’s top trade partner, home to a large Tunisian diaspora and a key interlocutor in managing migration from North Africa to Europe.

A French diplomatic official not authorized to speak publicly about the arrest told The Associated Press in late October that officials were in contact with Tunisian authorities about the case. Another diplomatic official with knowledge of the matter said on Thursday that French President Emmanuel Macron had recently spoken to Saied twice about the case and said that it was the subject of regular calls between top level diplomats.

Though foreign researchers are regularly surveilled while working in parts of the Middle East and North Africa, such arrests and charges against them are rare. In 2016, Giulio Regeni, an Italian Ph.D. student researching trade unions in Cairo, was found dead near a highway and marked with signs of torture. After an investigation, Italian prosecutors are trying four Egyptian security officials in absentia in Rome.

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Metz reported from Rabat, Morocco. Associated Press writers Angela Charlton in Paris and John Leicester in Le Pecq, France contributed to this report.

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