A French student who was arrested and detained in Tunisia returns to Paris

PARIS (AP) — A French doctoral student detained in Tunisia returned to Paris on Friday after weeks of top-level diplomatic discussions.

Victor Dupont, a 27-year-old pursuing a Ph.D. at Aix-Marseille University’s Institute of Research and Study on the Arab and Islamic Worlds, arrived at Charles de Gaulle Airport on Friday afternoon, 27 days after he was arrested in Tunis.

“Obviously, we welcome this outcome for him and, most of all, we welcome that he is able to reunite with his loved ones here in France,” French Foreign Ministry spokesman Christophe Lemoine said.

He announced the release at a ministry news briefing on Friday, saying that Dupont was freed Tuesday from prison and returned on Friday back to France.

Tunisian authorities in recent years have arrested journalists, activists and opposition figures, but Dupont’s arrest garnered international attention and condemnation because of his nationality and because he wasn’t known as a critic of the government.

Dupont researches social movements, youth unemployment and Tunisia’s 2011 revolution. Three other French nationals were also arrested Oct. 19 in front of Dupont's Tunis apartment. At least two were subsequently released. The whereabouts of the third person, a woman with dual French-Tunisian citizenship, weren’t immediately clear Friday.

Tunisian authorities have not commented on any of the arrests.

Dupont's arrest provoked concerns about the safety and security of foreign researchers in Tunisia, where rights and freedoms have gradually been curtailed under President Kais Saied.

Saied harnessed populist anger to win two terms as president of Tunisia and has reversed many of the democratic gains that were made after the country became the first to topple a longtime dictator in 2011 during the regional uprisings known as the Arab Spring.

Dupont's supporters, both at his university and in associations representing academics who work in the Middle East and North Africa, said that his research didn't pose any security risks, called the charges unfounded and decried authorities' choice to charge him in military court.

“It has no connection with foreign powers or foreign affairs and presents no threat whatsoever to the security of the Tunisian state. Rather, Dupont’s arrest highlights the constraints on academic freedom in Tunisia today and poses a dangerous precedent for the future of social scientific investigation in the country,” Asli Bali, Yale Law School professor and president of the Middle East Studies Association, wrote in a Nov. 9 letter to authorities.

Tunisia and France have maintained close political and economic ties since Tunisia became independent after 75 years of being a French protectorate. France is Tunisia’s top trade partner, home to a large Tunisian diaspora and a key interlocutor in managing migration from North Africa to Europe.

A French diplomatic official not authorized to speak publicly about the arrest told The Associated Press in late October that officials were in contact with Tunisian authorities about the case. Another diplomatic official with knowledge of the matter said on Thursday that French President Emmanuel Macron had recently spoken to Saied twice about the case and said that it was the subject of regular calls between top level diplomats.

Though foreign researchers are regularly surveilled while working in parts of the Middle East and North Africa, such arrests and charges against them are rare. In 2016, Giulio Regeni, an Italian Ph.D. student researching trade unions in Cairo, was found dead near a highway and marked with signs of torture. After an investigation, Italian prosecutors are trying four Egyptian security officials in absentia in Rome.

Metz reported from Rabat, Morocco. Associated Press writers Angela Charlton in Paris and John Leicester in Le Pecq, France contributed to this report.

This undated photo provided by the IREMAM shows Victor Dupont, a French student detained for weeks in Tunisia and who returned to Paris on Friday Nov. 15, 2024 after weeks of top-level diplomatic discussions. (IREMAM via AP)

LONDON (AP) — Musicians, collectors and fans have a chance to own a guitar god’s tools of the trade — instruments owned by the late Jeff Beck are going up for auction.

Christie’s announced Friday it will sell more than 130 items, including 90 guitars, from the collection of the Yardbirds and Jeff Beck Group guitarist, who died in January 2023 at age 78.

Valued at more than 1 million pounds ($1.3 million), the collection includes an oxblood 1954 Gibson Les Paul that Beck bought in Memphis in 1972 and played for the rest of the decade. The guitar, which is featured on the cover of Beck’s Grammy-winning 1975 jazz-fusion album “Blow by Blow,” is expected to sell for between 350,000 pounds and 500,000 pounds ($450,000 and $640,000).

Amelia Walker, head of Private and Iconic Collections at Christie's, called it “a really beautiful instrument, covered in grime and dust and signs of use.”

“I think it’s part of the appeal,” she said. “These are things that he used. They’ve got the indents of his fingernails on the fret boards. Some of them, the strings haven’t been changed for years. He played them hard. He didn’t see them as precious works of art — they were his tools to ply his trade with.”

Beck came to prominence in the 1960s with hard-rock progenitors the Yardbirds and went on to a solo career that incorporated rock, jazz, blues and even opera. Twice inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame — with the Yardbirds and as a solo artist — he played with everyone from Rod Stewart to Davie Bowie, Stevie Wonder and Tina Turner, and was known for his improvisational skill and the unique sound he got from the whammy bar on his preferred guitar, the Fender Stratocaster.

“He had an unparalleled ability to bend entire tones” on the Strat, Walker said. The sale includes Beck’s 1954 Sunburst Fender Stratocaster, valued at between 50,000 pounds and 80,000 pounds ($65,000 and $100,000), and a white Strat that was his staple instrument for 16 years, played everywhere from Ronnie Scott’s jazz club to the Obama White House. It has an estimated value between 20,000 pounds and 30,000 pounds ($26,000 and $39,000).

One of a group of 1960s guitar heroes that included Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page and Jimi Hendrix, Beck was revered by many peers as “the ultimate maestro,” Walker said.

As well as Beck’s beloved Strats, the sale features other models including a Telecaster-Gibson hybrid “Tele-Gib” valued at between 100,000 pounds and 150,000 pounds ($130,000 and $190,000).

“It didn’t really matter what he was playing, he’d always sound like Jeff Beck,” Walker said. “It didn’t matter what the amp was turned to or which guitar, he could still pick it up and make it sound incredible. It’s all in the fingers, and in his brain.”

The sale follows Christie's auction of some of Dire Straits’ guitarist Mark Knopfler’s collection, which raised more than 8.8 million pounds ($11.2 million) earlier this year, and memorabilia from model, artist and 1960s musicians’ muse Pattie Boyd, which sold for 2.8 million pounds ($3.6 million) in March.

Beck’s widow, Sandra Beck, said it was a “massive wrench” to part with the collection, but that “I know Jeff wanted for me to share this love.”

“After some hard thinking I decided they need to be shared, played and loved again,” she said.

A selection of the guitars will go on display at Christie's Los Angeles showroom Dec. 4-6, and the whole collection will be at Christie’s in London from Jan. 15 until the sale on Jan. 22.

Rocker Jeff Beck performs at the Louisiana Jazz and Heritage Festival in New Orleans, Friday, April 29, 2011. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)