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Opposition chief Ghannouchi, ex-prime minister and former presidential aide sentenced amid President Saied’s crackdown on dissent.
A Tunisian courtroom has handed jail phrases to 21 high-profile politicians and former prime officers, together with opposition chief and ex-Parliament Speaker Rached Ghannouchi, the Tunis Afrique Press (TAP) information company stories.
The rulings on Tuesday are the most recent transfer in President Kais Saied’s widening crackdown on critics and political opponents.
Ghannouchi, the chief of the Ennahdha celebration who has been in jail since 2023, was sentenced to as much as 14 years in jail. A number of others, together with former Prime Minister Youssef Chahed and ex-Minister of Overseas Affairs Rafik Abdessalem Bouchlaka, had been sentenced in absentia to 35 years.
Nadia Akacha, Saied’s former chief of workers, who was thought-about an in depth and influential aide to the president, was additionally handed a 35-year jail sentence in absentia, in keeping with the TAP.
The costs in opposition to the defendants cowl a variety of alleged offences, together with forming and becoming a member of a “terrorist” organisation and conspiring in opposition to inner state safety.
On Tuesday, Bouchlaka, the previous overseas minister, dismissed the sentences as unserious, saying that the Tunisian authorities has grow to be a “mockery in entrance of the world with its immaturity, recklessness and craziness”.
“Eventually, this mendacity, misleading coup regime will depart just like the dictators, tyrants and fraudsters that left earlier than it,” Bouchlaka wrote in a social media put up.
Many opposition leaders, some journalists and critics of Saied have been imprisoned since he suspended the elected parliament and commenced ruling by decree in 2021 – strikes the opposition has described as a coup.
Critics have accused Saied of utilizing the judiciary and police to focus on his political opponents. Many warn that democratic good points within the birthplace of the Arab Spring within the years because the 2011 revolution that toppled longtime Tunisian chief Zine El Abidine Ben Ali are being steadily rolled again.
Saied rejects the accusations and says his actions are authorized and aimed toward ending years of chaos and rampant corruption.
Ennahdha denies allegations in opposition to the group. The celebration had emerged as one in all Tunisia’s largest after the 2011 rebellion, and Ghannouchi led a power-sharing settlement with late President Beji Caid Essebsi to transition the nation to democracy.
Final yr, the Tunisian authorities closed down Ennahda’s headquarters in Tunis. Ghannouchi, 84, is already serving different jail sentences for expenses that his supporters say are political.
In February, he was given a 22-year sentence for “plotting in opposition to state safety”.
Ennahdha known as the ruling “a blatant assault on the independence and impartiality of the judiciary and a blatant politicisation of its procedures and rulings”.
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