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Twenty prisoners have died in detention in Tunisia due to sweltering temperatures in recent weeks, the head of the Tunisian League for Human Rights (LTDH) told a radio station on Thursday.
Tunisia has suffered high temperatures in recent weeks as people struggled with long power outages and water cuts.
LTDH president Bassem Trifi told Express FM that the rights group documented “a wave of deaths” through the end of August based on information from doctors, lawyers and relatives of prisoners who died in jail from the heat.
“Prison conditions are already dire under normal circumstances, let alone when temperatures soar to 45 degrees,” Trifi said, citing suffocation and the lack of proper ventilation in cells.
Trifi also said overcrowding in prisons was a major issue, adding that such detention conditions in rising temperatures amounted to torture.
Authorities have yet to confirm any heat-related deaths in prison.
Trifi said information on the matter was scarce, particularly after a 2025 ban on the LTDH from visiting prisons.
Henda Chebbi, a health ministry official speaking about recent deaths in general, said authorities would not “release figures or attribute a death to a given cause until we have thoroughly verified it through scientific indicators and forensic analysis”.
But the Tunisian Young Doctors Organisation (OTJM) said in late August that emergency services had recorded “an unprecedented rise in deaths and hospitalisations due to heatstrokes and high temperatures”.
In late July, the OTJM president said that up to 200 heatstroke-related deaths were recorded.
Relatives and lawyers of detained political opponents have also raised concerns over the conditions in prisons, with many of President Kais Saied’s critics behind bars.
Among them are Ennahdha party leader Rached Ghannouchi, 85, whose lawyers in July said his health was “critical” after reports that he fainted and suffered severe exhaustion.
