In March 2012, two young Tunisians, Ghazi Beji and Jabeur Mejri were charged for “transgressing morality, defamation and disrupting public order” after they circulated caricatures of Mohamed on Facebook. While Ghazi Beji was tried in absentia as he had escaped to Europe, Jabeur Mejri was sentenced to 7 and a half years in prison by a court of first instance of Mahdia. The appeal was denied and the judgment confirmed in June 2012 by the appellate court of Monastir, and by the cassation court of Tunis on April 25, 2013. Mejri was freed in March 2014 after he was granted presidential pardon in February 2014. But he was arrested again in April 2014 and sentenced to 8 months of prison for insulting a clerk. He was granted presidential pardon, and freed once again on October 14, 2014. This legal saga has been at the center of a heated polemic that mobilized political officials, lawyers, human rights organizations, as well as the national and international public opinion. My paper will examine the development of this local trial into a national and international affair (qaziyya) about “blasphemy” and free speech. Through what mechanisms has an individual who was most famous for his involvement in petty embezzlement crimes become a hero of freedom of speech and conscience? This affair reveals essential fractures of the political and social scene of the Tunisian transition. It also transforms the boundaries within which moral norms can be politically renegotiated. It offers a productive site of analysis of how moral and political boundaries have been collectively redefined. While Arabic-speaking Salafists viewed Mejri’s cartoons as a scandalous form of “takfeer”, secularist organizations seized this opportunity to voice their fear and distaste for the Islamist led Troika government. The affair is made all the more complex by the elusiveness of its hero -who appeared as a petty criminal to some, and as a hero of free speech to others- and the versatility of the definition of the “cause”. While supporters of Mejri initially defined the “cause” to be defended as both a matter of free speech and right to be an atheist, the argument about atheism was quickly overshadowed by the argument about free speech.