Front Line is concerned following reports that journalist Mr Lotfi Hidouri was arrested on 10 December 2008 at Tunis' Carthage airport as he prepared to leave for Beirut to attend the Third Arab Free Press Forum. Mr Mohamed Abbou, was also prevented from leaving the country and attending the conference in Beirut after he intervened to determine the reason for Lotfi Hidouri's arrest. Lotfi Hidouri is the sub-editor of Kalima newspaper and a member of L'Observatoire pour la Liberté de Presse – OLPEC (The Observatory for the Freedom of the Press). Mohamed Abbou is a lawyer and a member of the Conseil National pour les Libertés en Tunisie – CNLT (National Council for Liberties in Tunisia).

On 10 December 2008, after clearing security and having his passport stamped, Lofti Hidouri was met by two plain clothes officers who told him to follow them. He was taken to the airport police offices where he was presented with a police statement of offence indicating that he was being arrested for non-payment of a fine. The fine referred to in the police statement was a 100 dinar fine issued more than two years before, which had been fully paid within the required time. Lotfi Hidouri had previously travelled several times without any difficulty concerning the alleged infraction. Mohamed Abbou, who intervened as a lawyer on behalf of Lotfi Hidouri, asserted that the fact that his passport had been stamped at the border control was a clear indication that there was no record of the charge in the police's own centralized information system and that they were using the alleged outstanding fine as an excuse to prevent Lotfi Hidouri from attending the conference.

On the evening of 10 December, Lotfi Hidouri was transferred to the Bouchoucha detention centre where he was held overnight and ordered to appear in court the following day. On 11 December, at the Tunis court of justice, his lawyer produced documentary evidence that the fine had been paid within the required time. The judge, however, refused to release Lotfi Hidouri stating that he had already been transferred to Mornaguia prison, while he was in fact in a cell within the same building. Lotfi Hidouri was finally released without charge at approximately 8:00 p.m.

Prior to his arrest on 10 December, Mohamed Abbou had previously been prevented from travelling on several occasions. In August 2007, one month after his release from prison, the authorities informed him that he had been made subject to a one-year travel ban . That ban elapsed at the end of July 2008, but Mohamed Abbou has received no official confirmation of this and was again prevented from travelling to France in October 2008.

Front Line believes that the arrest of Lotfi Hidouri and the ongoing de facto travel ban placed on Mohamed Abbou forms part of an ongoing campaign of harassment and intimidation on the part of the Tunisian authorities against human rights defenders in order to dissuade them from continuing with their legitimate work in the defence of human rights.