Mohamed Salah Fliss

On 25 July 2012 in Bizerte, Boris Boillon, Ambassador of France in Tunisia gives him the insignia of knight of the Legion of Honor.

Fliss, who had already been part of the support committee of the Tunisian League for Human Rights, the man at the step of the ladder by the old regime, chaired the congress of the non-governmental organization in September 2011.

In 2005, he supported the 18-October movement for fundamental rights. After the revolution of 2011, he was named president of the special mandate in charge of the management of the municipality of Bizerte, making him the de facto mayor of the city for two years.

Finally, following the events of Gafsa, on 26 January 1980 Fliss was among several former political prisoners arrested for "preventive" measures. He was released on 30 April of the same year.

After having campaigned in the movement Perspectives and El Amal Ettounsi, Mohamed Salah Fliss joined in the Tunisian Human Rights League and became a member of its steering committee in the 1980s.

He was arrested again on 20 March 1975 in Carthage, in the suburbs of Tunis, for his clandestine activities within the renamed prospect group El Amal Ettounsi (L'Ouvrier tunisien). After a ten-hour torture session, he lost the use of his legs for three months. He was kept in Kasserine prison (center-west of Tunisia), then was transferred again to Borj Erroumi after it was decided to regroup political prisoners. He was later pardoned on 3 August 1979. .

Thanks to the uprising of students that shook Tunisia in 1972, he was arrested on 14 February and transported with other prospects to a villa in Nassen (southern suburbs of Tunis) which turned out to be a torture center. On 21 April, the whole group was transferred to the civil prison of Tunis where they detained until December of the same year.

Like most children of his generation, Mohamed Salah Fliss follows a mixed education by studying at the French school, the Franco-Arab school of Bizerte, while pursuing traditional studies in a Koranic school in the medina. Rejected by the "immoral" behavior of a teacher, he leaves Koranic school after a few years of study. He continued his studies at the high school Stephen-Pichon of Bizerte before obtaining his baccalaureate and to leave the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of Tunis. He then joined the student movement led at the time by leftist groups, in particular the Perspectives movement. In 1968, the student movement was severely repressed by the authorities. Mohamed Salah Fliss was one of the victims of this repression.

He was arrested with the group of Perspectivist on 4 April 1968 and was sentenced to two years in prison. He first served with his companions in the civil prison of 9-April in Tunis and then he was jailed in prison Borj Erroumi known for the harshness of the conditions of detention. Mohamed Salah was accused of the attempted plot of 1962. He was finally pardoned like the rest of the group of perspectivists in January 1970.

Mohamed Salah Fliss (born in 1946 in Bizerte) is a Tunisian politician. He is the author of Uncle Hamda the docker (Aam Hamda attal in Arabic) which is a testimony on the prison experiences of political activists of the Tunisian left in the 1970s.