Two aid workers accused of assisting irregular migration to Tunisia were sentenced Monday to two years in prison, with four months suspended, but will be freed after time already served, their lawyer said, sentences well short of what had been feared.

Mustapha Djemali, an 81-year-old Tunisian-Swiss national who heads the Tunisian Refugee Council, and TRC project manager Abderrazek Krimi, had been charged with "sheltering" migrants and "facilitating illegal entry" into the North African country.

Yusra Djemali, a daughter of the TRC chief, told AFP on Monday: "It's still unjust, but we are truly relieved because the sentence is rather light.

"He has about four months of the suspended sentence left, but the important thing is that he gets out of prison tonight."

This was the first trial of more than a dozen aid workers from various organisations arrested during a May 2024 crackdown.

Earlier on Monday, Human Rights Watch called for charges against aid workers to be dropped, amid fears that they could be sentenced to a decade in jail.

The TRC partnered with the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, to screen asylum applications.

Three other TRC members, appearing in court while free on the same charges as Djemali and Krimi, were acquitted, lawyer Mounira Ayadi told AFP.

Lawyers have insisted that the TRC worked legally to help asylum seekers.

Ayadi and other lawyers all argued that the TRC worked in "exclusive partnership" and within the framework of a "legal agreement" with the UNHCR to find emergency accommodation for asylum seekers and refugees.

"The TRC carried out essential protection work in support of refugees and asylum seekers, operating legally with international organisations accredited in Tunisia," the group said in a statement.

"Targeting an organisation with abusive legal action criminalises crucial assistance work and leaves asylum seekers without the support they desperately need."

Migration is a sensitive issue in Tunisia, a key transit point for tens of thousands seeking to reach Europe each year.

The defendants were arrested in May 2024 along with about a dozen humanitarian workers, including members of French group Terre d'Asile and anti-racist organisation Mnemty, who are awaiting trial.

In February 2023, President Kais Saied said "hordes of illegal migrants", many from sub-Saharan Africa, posed a demographic threat to the Arab-majority country.

His speech triggered a series of racially motivated attacks as thousands of sub-Saharan African migrants in Tunisia were pushed out of their homes and jobs.

Thousands were repatriated or attempted to cross the Mediterranean, while others were expelled to the desert borders with Algeria and Libya, where at least a hundred died that summer.

This came as the European Union boosted efforts to curb arrivals, including a 255-million-euro ($290-million) deal with Tunis.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)