A Tunisian prisoner died in Mornaguia prison due to critical health conditions and high temperatures

Amina Satta said that her father died at midnight, after being transferred from Mornaguia prison, in a critical health condition since the evening of Saturday, September 5, 2026. She explained that her father was suffering from several diseases, and that the prison conditions, including high temperatures and the availability of limited amounts of water, worsened his health condition.

Amina Satta held the authorities responsible for their negligence and negligence, stressing that she would sue before international courts anyone who caused her father’s health to deteriorate and his death as a result. She also denounced the failure to inform the family of the death immediately after it occurred and their failure to inform them that he had fallen into a coma on Monday, considering that the procedures of the Prison Administration and the Ministry of Justice were being applied “inhumanely.” She indicated that the medical staff at the hospital did everything necessary to try to save her father.

This case comes in a broader context, as the head of the Tunisian League for the Defense of Human Rights, Bassam Trifi, announced that 20 deaths had been documented in Tunisian prisons in recent weeks, linked to high temperatures that sometimes exceeded 45 degrees Celsius. Al-Tarifi said that the prison conditions were already difficult, including lack of ventilation and overcrowding, and had worsened with the heat wave, considering that the conditions “amount to torture.”

Human rights sources reported that the capacity of some prisons reached about 300 percent, amid a lack of ventilation, the spread of diseases, and poor health care. In Kairouan, the association announced the death of a 50-year-old prisoner following a stroke resulting from extreme heat, while another prisoner died in Mornaguia prison in the capital, Tunis, after suffocating due to the heat.

On the other hand, the Prisons Administration and the Ministry of Justice did not provide any official data or numbers about these deaths, while Al-Tarifi confirmed that the investigating judge at the Court of First Instance in Tunis entrusted 16 files in this regard.