The Tunisia of President Kais Saied continues to regress to the worst days of the Zin el Abidin Ben Ali dictatorship. The arrest, on Monday night, of Rachid Ghanuchi, leader of the En Nahda political movement, with a moderate Islamist tendency, leads the country “to an unknown place”, according to the party leadership.
It is one more twist in the struggle that Saied began months after becoming president, in October 2019. In July 2021, the president assumed full executive powers, dismissed the prime minister and suspended the sessions of Parliament, which Ghanuchi was presiding precisely and whose party constituted the assembly majority. Thus began the totalitarian drift of Saied that has only increased.
On Monday night, the Tunisian police showed up at the home of Rachid Ghanuchi minutes after breaking the Ramadan fast and proceeded to arrest him after searching his residence, confirmed his son-in-law Rafik Abdesalam. According to the Tunisian press, the Islamist leader is being held at the Aouina national guard headquarters, near the Tunis airport.
An official from the Ministry of the Interior specified this Tuesday, according to Reuters, that Ghanuchi has been detained for questioning and that his house has been searched by order of the prosecutor who was investigating “inciting statements”. The 81-year-old politician’s lawyers say they were unaware of this investigation. In the interrogation, Ghanuchi has refrained from making statements without the presence of his lawyer. Shortly after, he was taken to the Mongi Slim hospital, in the La Marsa neighborhood, after feeling unwell, the Tunisian media reported.
In anticipation of mobilizations, since Monday night the police forces have surrounded the headquarters of En Nahda, located in Mont Plaisir, very close to the nerve center of the Tunisian capital. The offices are being searched in an operation that could take days. Islamist leaders have also denounced that the authorities have prevented the militants from meeting at the party’s offices in different parts of the country. The Tunisian headquarters of the Salvation Front, a coalition of forces opposed to Saied, including En Nahda, has also been blocked by the police. In Tunisia, the state of emergency is in force.
“It looks like an attempt to ban En Nahda and hit the opposition,” Riadh Chaibi, a senior Islamist party leader, told Reuters. In Nahda it is the most important political formation in Tunisia. For decades it was prohibited and most of its leaders and militants suffered imprisonment or exile, like Ghanuchi himself. With the revolution that overthrew Ben Ali on January 14, 2011, the country headed for a democratic transition in which En Nahda, already legalized and with the return of its exiled leaders, played an important role and took part in the successive governments that came out of the polls. In 2021, Saied cut short the democratic process.
Last Saturday, at a rally that brought together the opposition, Ghanuchi – Saied’s great rival – evoked the risk of the country falling into the abyss of civil war in the event of “elimination of all political dissent”. His specific words were: “Tunisia without En Nahda, without political Islam, without the left or any other component, is a civil war project.”
In a statement late at night, the political party demanded Ghanuchi’s immediate release and “an end to attacks against opposition political activists.” In addition, according to Efe, the party condemned the “so dangerous development” of the events of recent months.
Since the beginning of February, the authorities have carried out a spiral of arrests in which more than twenty opponents, including politicians, journalists, businessmen and even judges, have been jailed on charges of “plot against state security.”
Among the victims of this persecution are – as occurred in the 1990s and 2000s – prominent members of En Nahda, such as the former Interior Minister and vice president of the formation Ali Larayedh, who has been in pretrial detention since December. He is accused of having allegedly organized the recruitment of jihadists. Human Rights Watch has recently called for his “immediate” release, since there is no “credible evidence of crimes” of this nature. Also under arrest is the director of the most listened to radio station in the country: Mosaïque FM.
Yesterday, Monday, three other Islamist leaders were also arrested: Mohamed Gumani, Belkacem Hasan and Mohamed Chnaiba. President Saied describes the detainees as “terrorists” and “conspirators”. The opposition accuses Saied of “coup plotting”.
The head of state led a ceremony to pay tribute to the security forces on Tuesday but made no reference to the arrest of Ghanuchi. Yes, he issued an appeal to the judiciary to “assume his role in this phase that the country is going through.” And he added: “We are waging a merciless war against those who seek to undermine the state and its institutions.”
The European Union, Tunisia’s main partner, yesterday expressed its “concern” at the latest events and demanded respect for the “fundamental principle of political pluralism” as an “essential element for all democracy”, which, it affirmed, constitutes “the basis of the EU partnership with Tunisia”.
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