French PhD student detained in Tunisia on breach of state security charges, lab director says

PARIS (Reuters) – French PhD student Victor Dupont was detained in Tunisia on breach of state security charges 12 days ago, and French authorities are trying to negotiate his release, the director of his research lab, Vincent Geisser, said.

Dupont, 27, was arrested just before midday on Oct. 19 at his home in a suburb of Tunis along with three friends visiting from France, according to one of the friends, Edouard Matalon, a Paris-based librarian, who was released the same day after questioning.

Another of the friends, who is of French-Tunisian nationality, also remains in custody on the same charges, Matalon added.

“This is an attack on academic freedom,” said Geisser, director of the French Institute of Research and Study on the Arab and Islamic Worlds at Aix-Marseille University.

The Tunisian authorities were not immediately available for comment. The French ministry of foreign affairs did not reply to a request for comment.

Dupont’s PhD, which he started in 2022, looks at the socio-economic and life trajectories of those who took part in social movements of the 2011 revolution that toppled President Zine el Abidine Ben Ali.