Tunisian cartoonists jailed for disrespecting Prophet Muhammad(P.B.U.H)

A court in Tunis sentenced two young Tunisian men to seven years in prison each for publishing unacceptable caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), the Tunisian Justice Ministry said Thursday.

“They were sentenced, one of them in absentia, to seven years in prison, for transgressing morality, defamation and disrupting public order,” Tunisia’s Justice Ministry spokesman Chokri Nefti said.

The sentences were handed down on March 28 and defense lawyers have appealed the decision.

One of the two young men was jailed, but the other was not in court for the verdict. They are both from the town of Mahdia, around 200 kilometers (120 miles) south of the capital Tunis.

Nefti said they had posted the cartoons on their Facebook page.

The number of trials on charges of transgressing morality has surged since the Islamist Ennahda party won Tunisia’s first post-revolution elections in October.