TUNIS, Tunisia (AP) Amina Sboui, the imprisoned Tunisian member of the Ukrainian women's group Femen, is facing new charges following an altercation with a prison guard, her defense lawyer said Thursday.
Sboui, 19, shocked Tunisians in March by posting topless photos of herself online to denounce the mistreatment of women in the kind of seminude protest favored by Femen. She was later arrested on May 19 for scrawling the name of the group on the wall of a cemetery in the Tunisian city of Kairouan, where ultraconservative Muslims had planned an annual conference.
Tunisia is known as one of the most progressive Arab states, especially in terms of women's rights, but Sboui's case has challenged the limits of tolerance, especially of a government controlled by Islamists and it has become the latest battleground over the identity of the country.
She has been charged with belonging to a criminal organization, undermining public morals and desecrating a cemetery, which could result in an eight-year prison term upon conviction. She has been in prison for two months, and no trial date has been set.
Her lawyer, Halim Meddeb, said Sboui is now facing two new charges, "insulting a civil servant in the exercise of his duty" and "defamation of a civil servant" after she tried to stop a guard from allegedly beating another prisoner.