A former United Nations employee has been held in custody for more than a year. His family is convinced he is an innocent victim of political circumstances and accuses the Swiss authorities and the UN refugee agency of not doing enough. “He is an innocent citizen, an innocent Swiss citizen. He is risking death, and this is unacceptable,” says Yusra Djemali, her voice trembling as she speaks of her father Mustapha, an 81-year-old chronically ill Swiss-Tunisian detained in Tunisia. She accuses Swiss authorities of failing to act, using his dual citizenship as justification for their inaction. Since he was first detained in May 2024, longtime UN employee Mustapha Djemali has lost 40 kg in body weight, his family reports. They describe the prison conditions as appalling. Sixty inmates are crammed into an overcrowded prison cell with tiny windows, no air conditioning despite outside temperatures sometimes reaching more than 40 degrees Celsius, and the air thick with cigarette smoke. It ...
