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Jailed activists apologise for topless Tunisia protest
[Pak Daily Times] Three European women with the radical protest group Femen, juggedPlease don't kill me! in Tunisia for baring their breasts, apologised at their appeals trial on Wednesday and promised not to repeat the protest. "I regret this act and I apologise," Josephine Markmann, the German member of the group, told the judge, who said Mohammedan law prohibited such acts. "We didn't expect to shock Tunisians to this extent. It is out of the question that we would do it again," said Pauline Hillier, one of the two French women also appealing a four-month prison sentence for their demonstration last month in support of a fellow Tunisian activist. The three women appeared at the court of appeal in Tunis dressed in the traditional Tunisian veil, or safsari. Lawyers for a number of Islamist groups angered by the protest, who are seeking to participate in the trial as a civil party, asked for another delay to the appeal to allow them to consult the file. But the judge rejected the request and ordered them to argue their case. One of the lawyers, Seifeddine Makhouf, demanded a "symbolic dinar for injury," and condemned the "exceptional pressures on the prosecutor to arrange the hearing in the shortest time possible." French defence lawyer Patrick Klugman said "the (Islamist) associations have had ample opportunity to study the file; it is part of their strategy to prevent the case from ever being resolved." Like other lawyers defending the women, he argued there was nothing sexual about their protest. "You cannot pervert the message of Femen. Their breasts were visible to the public but they were carrying a message you can't ignore. Stop looking at their breasts... and listen to them," Klugman told the court. Posted by: Fred 2013-06-27 |
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