May 18. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Court of Appeals of Tunisia has decided to send twelve opposition politicians belonging to the Islamist party Ennahda, including its vice-president, Mondher Unissi, who was previously detained, to trial on charges of “terrorism”, within the framework of an increase in persecution against opposition figures in the country.
Furthermore, the court has refused to release Unissi, who will be tried alongside Rafik Buchalaka, Scheherazade Okasha, Ahmed Qalul, Al Taher Bubahari, Reda Idris, Moaz al Jereiyi, Maher Zaid, Mohamed Fathi al Ayadi, Mohamed al Samiti and others two individuals who have not been identified, as confirmed by the spokesman for the Court of Appeals of Tunisia, Habib Tarjani, to the Tunisian radio station Mossaique.
This same week, the well-known Tunisian lawyer and journalist Sonia Dahmani was arrested at the headquarters of the Tunisian Bar Association. According to Tunisian media, Dahmani has been accused of spreading false information and making sarcastic comments about the current situation in the country. In mid-April, a Tunisian court of first instance charged several opposition leaders with acts of “terrorism.”
The opposition, mostly united around the National Salvation Front (FSN), has denounced for more than two years an authoritarian drift of the country’s president, Kais Saied, and has demanded his resignation, especially given the wave of arrests of opponents, activists and journalists, as well as the low participation rates in the constitutional referendum and the elections held since then in Tunisia.
Saied assumed additional powers in 2021 when he closed the elected Parliament, dominated by the Islamic Ennahda formation, and went on to govern by decree before assuming authority over the judiciary, a move for which he assumed all state powers and considered by his critics like a self-coup d’état.
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