AFP - Tunisia freed all of its remaining 800 political prisoners by Wednesday under an amnesty granted after the fall president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, a lawyer told AFP.
"The last political prisoners in Tunisia were freed on Wednesday," said Samir Ben Omar, a lawyer and activist with the International Association for the Support of Political Prisoners.
In total "about 800 political prisoners have been freed," he said.
They were released under an amnesty declared on January 20, nearly a week after the fall of authoritarian Ben Ali in an uprising that sparked similar protests across the Arab world.
It was one of the first acts by the interim government appointed when Ben Ali ended his 23 years in power by fleeing to Saudi Arabia.
The amnesty came into force on February 19 in a decree signed by acting president Foued Mebazaa.
It applied to "all those who were imprisoned or prosecuted for crimes as a result of their political or trade union activities," the official TAP news agency reported.
The justice authorities had said days before that about 3,000 prisoners had already been conditionally released.
Some of those freed spoke afterwards of torture and bad treatment they endured when jailed for long periods under the toppled regime.
Lawyer Radhia Nasraoui, who is head of Tunisia's Association to Combat Torture, has said thousands of political prisoners have been tortured, of whom some have died and others remain missing.
The new administration has also opened the way for the legalisation of political groups banned under Ben Ali and the return of exiles.
Islamist movement Ennahda (Awakening) announced Tuesday it had finally been granted legal status, 30 years after it was formed.
"We are entering in a new phase of national action ... to contribute to the building of a democratic regime," spokesman Ali El-Aryadh told AFP after Ennahda had received notification that it had been legalised.
Thousands of Islamist activists and sympathisers were arrested in the 1990s and many went into exile as Ben Ali's authoritarian government presented itself as a bulwark against extremism.
Despite introducing reforms and pledging elections by mid-July, the interim administration has been heavily criticised, facing weeks of protests including over its inclusion of key figures from Ben Ali's regime.
Interim prime minister Mohammed Ghannouchi, who held the same post under Ben Ali, quit on Sunday after clashes at weekend anti-government demonstrations left five people dead.
Two ministers followed him on Monday and three more on Tuesday.
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