Shadows from the past

SOMETIMES it was as simple as leaving the lights on. “We lost any sense of whether it was day or night,” says Nasri Muhammad Naceur, one of thousands of former political prisoners in Tunisia. But the torture meted out in the infamous cells beneath the interior ministry, where Mr Naceur was held, was often much worse. During the dictatorships of Habib Bourguiba, from 1957 to 1987, and Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, from 1987 to 2011, many prisoners were hung naked, like a roast chicken, from an iron bar. Others were beaten or electrocuted. Women picked up by the state stood a good chance of being raped.

More than five years after the revolution that tossed out Mr Ben Ali and ushered in a wobbly democracy, Tunisia is still coming to grips with its brutal past. Mr Naceur and thousands of others have shared their stories with the country’s Truth and Dignity Commission. Inspired by the South African body that examined the sins of apartheid, Tunisia’s commission aims to deliver justice to the government’s victims from as far back as 1955, a year before the country’s independence from France. According to the law creating the commission, those responsible for the worst crimes, such as rape and murder, should be prosecuted; victims of abuse and corruption should be compensated; and the commission should offer reforms so that the past is not repeated.