2023-10-31 16:16:13
The leader of the Ennahda party, Rached Ghannouchi, in Tunis, October 3, 2019. HASSENE DRIDI / AP
A Tunisian court has toughened on appeal to fifteen months in prison a conviction for glorifying terrorism handed down against Rached Ghannouchi, imprisoned leader of the Ennahda party and main opponent of Tunisian President, Kaïs Saïed, announced his Islamo-conservative movement Tuesday October 31. Rached Ghannouchi, in detention since April in another case, was sentenced in May 2023 to a year in prison and a fine of around 300 euros, confirmed on appeal.
The 82-year-old leader was convicted under a complaint from a police union denouncing comments he made in early 2022 during the funeral of an Ennahda official to whom he had assured that he “feared neither the powerful nor the tyrants”this word designating the police officers, according to the prosecution file.
“These accusations are false and devoid of any legal basis”Ennahda said in a statement, believing that the word “tyrant” had been “taken out of context”. The appeal judgment comes “illustrate once again the subordination of part of the judicial power to the executive power and its desire to harass its political opponents”added Ennahda.
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Around twenty opponents imprisoned
Rached Ghannouchi is the most important figure in the opposition to Kaïs Saïed since the latter, democratically elected in 2019, seized full powers in a coup on July 25, 2021 and then had the Constitution revised to establish an ultra-presidential regime. Leader of a party which has dominated political life over the last decade, he has been questioned in several investigations, in particular on the“sending jihadists” towards Syria and Iraq and suspicions of “dirty money laundering”.
Mr. Ghannouchi has been imprisoned since April 17 after speaking in public about a risk of ” civil war “ in Tunisia if left-wing parties or those stemming from political Islam like Ennahda were eliminated there. Since February, more than twenty opponents, businessmen and other personalities, described as “terrorists” by Mr. Saïed, are imprisoned on charges of “plot against internal security”.
The latest arrest, on October 5, is that of the opponent Abir Moussi, leader of the Free Destourian Party, a movement nostalgic for the dictatorships of the hero of independence Habib Bourguiba and his successor Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali, overthrown in 2011 during the revolution which marked the start of the “Arab Spring”.
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