Former minister and businessman Mehdi Ben Gharbia was sentenced to two years in prison by the sixth specialized chamber of the Tunis Court. The verdict falls while the person concerned is already facing several sentences linked to financial matters and remains incarcerated in the resounding case of the murder of Rahma Lahmar. This new judgment confirms the judicial escalation around a once influential political figure.
A verdict which adds to a dark series
The decision marks a new stage in the accumulation of convictions targeting Mehdi Ben Gharbia. The specialized criminal court held against him customs and banking offenses involving commercial companies he managed. The sentence: two years in prison, accompanied by fines.
But this judgment does not arrive in a judicial vacuum. Since the start of 2025, the former minister has been caught up in a succession of harsh decisions. In detention since October 2021 and prosecuted in several cases, the businessman and former minister was sentenced last January to four years in prison and a fine of fifty thousand dinars for financial and administrative corruption within two transport and consulting companies which belong to him.
A few months later, in June, the courts handed down an additional eight years, spread over four separate cases of financial corruption, money laundering and customs fraud against the former Minister of Relations with constitutional bodies, civil society and human rights.
These cases involved two of his companies and also involved employees considered to be his accomplices. The decisions, successive and cumulative, have placed Ben Gharbia in one of the heaviest legal trajectories recorded against a former member of the government in recent years.
The lingering shadow of the Rahma Lahmar affair
In addition to these financial convictions, there is a much more sensitive case: that of the murder of Rahma Lahmar, found dead in 2020 in Aïn Zaghouan. In May 2025, an unexpected twist led to the official incarceration of Mehdi Ben Gharbia in this case, even though he had never been publicly linked to the case before.
The announcement created astonishment: the disappearance and violent death of the young woman had marked public opinion, triggering a wave of national indignation. The judicial involvement of a former minister in such an emblematic criminal case had therefore changed the political and media scale of the Ben Gharbia case.
Today, this case remains open, and the investigation continues to fuel speculation about the exact nature of his involvement.
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