In another case involving speech deemed offensive, in February, Nasreddine Ben Saïda, director of the daily newspaper Ettounsiyya, spent one week in pretrial detention and then was ordered on March 8 to pay a 1,000-dinar fine (US$657) for publishing a photo of a soccer star posing with his semi-nude girlfriend. Authorities have also continued the prosecution on the basis of penal code article 121(3) of Nabil Karoui, director of Nessma TV, for airing the animated movie Persepolis, which contains a pictorial representation of God.Many Muslims believe God must not be depicted in images. First charged in October 2011, Karoui has remained provisionally free as his trial has been postponed numerous times. Under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), governments may only restrict the right to freedom of expression to protect public morals if the restriction conforms to strict tests of necessity and proportionality and is non-discriminatory, including on the grounds of religion or belief. However, the laws that the Tunisian authorities have used to prosecute such speech are overly broad and have enabled them to punish people for speech solely on the grounds that it is deemed offensive to Islam. The U.N. Human Rights Committee, in its 2011 General Comment on the ICCPR’s article 19, held that the right to freedom of expression protects speech that might be deemed offensive or hurtful to followers of a particular religion, unless the speech in question amounts to “advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence.” The Human Rights Committee is considered the authoritative interpreter of the ICCPR. On the right to freedom of religion and conscience – contained in article 18 of the ICCPR – the Human Rights Committee affirmed in 1993 that article 18 “protects theistic, non-theistic and atheistic beliefs, as well as the right not to profess any religion or belief.” Tunisia’s National Constituent Assembly is drafting a new constitution that will set the principles by which the country’s laws will eventually be revised. “Majri and Beji may have offended some Tunisians with their postings but that is no reason to imprison them,” Whitson said. “The National Constituent Assembly should draft a constitution with strong safeguards for freedom of expression and conscience that will provide a basis for abolishing prison as a punishment for nonviolent speech offenses.”