The former speaker of the Tunisian Parliament, dissolved in 2021 by the new president Kais Saied, had been in the crosshairs of the authorities for several months now for his statements against the power in place.
The arrest took place on Monday at the end of the day, in full breaking of the Ramadan fast, indicates RFI. Tunisian authorities have arrested the leader of the Islamo-conservative Ennahdha movement, Rached Ghannouchi, one of the main opponents of President Kais Saied accused of authoritarian drift, his party said.
The 81-year-old politician, who led the Parliament dissolved in July 2021 by Kais Saied, is the most prominent opponent to be arrested since this coup. He was arrested by police at his home in Tunis, Ennahdha said in a statement, denouncing “this extremely serious development” and calling for his “immediate release”.
“Tyrans”
Ennahdha vice-president Mondher Lounissi told a press conference that Rached Ghannouchi had been taken to a police barracks for questioning and that his lawyers had not been allowed to attend.
His arrest comes after statements reported by the media, in which he said this weekend that Tunisia would be threatened with a “civil war” if political Islam, from which his party originated, was eliminated there.
A source at the Interior Ministry quoted by Tunisian media confirmed that the arrest was linked to these statements. He had appeared in February at the counter-terrorism judicial center following a complaint accusing him of having called the police “tyrants”.
Political opponents targeted
The opponent, President Saied’s pet peeve, was also heard in November 2022 by a judge from the counter-terrorism judicial center for a case related to the alleged dispatch of jihadists to Syria and Iraq. In July of the same year, he was also questioned on suspicion of corruption and money laundering linked to the transfer of funds from abroad to a charity organization affiliated with Ennahdha.
Since the beginning of February, the authorities have imprisoned more than twenty opponents and personalities including ex-ministers, businessmen and the owner of the most listened to radio station in the country, Mosaïque FM.
These arrests, denounced by local and international NGOs, targeted leading political figures of the National Salvation Front (FSN), the main opposition coalition of which Ennahdha is a member.
“New Phase”
President Saied, who has assumed full powers since his July 2021 coup, called those arrested “terrorists”, saying they were involved in a “conspiracy against state security”.
“The arrest of the leader of the most important political party in the country, and who has always shown his attachment to peaceful political action, marks a new phase in the crisis”, reacted Monday evening to AFP the president of the FSN , Ahmed Nejib Chebbi. “This is blind revenge against opponents,” he added.
After his coup, Kais Saied had the Constitution revised to establish an ultra-presidentialist system at the expense of Parliament, which no longer has any real powers, unlike the dissolved Assembly dominated by Ennahdha.
Decline in popularity
A leading opponent under the regimes of Habib Bourguiba and Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, the return to the country of Rached Ghannouchi after twenty years of exile in London, following the fall of the dictator in 2011, was celebrated by thousands of people.
But his star has gradually faded since the revolution, his detractors accusing him of being a pragmatic maneuverer ready to do anything to stay in power. Failing to be able to gather an absolute majority, he has always managed to ensure that Ennahdha is essential in the various coalitions since the revolution.
Even if it means making unnatural alliances with the liberal party Qalb Tounes of businessman Nabil Karoui, or with former president Beji Caid Essebsi, arguing the need for a “consensus” necessary for democratic transition.
At the beginning of his career, he was first inspired by the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, before claiming the Turkish Islamist model of Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
He then turned Ennahdha into a civil movement, supposed since 2016 to be devoted only to politics, and has since appeared as a “Muslim democrat” defending conservative values without dogmatism.
