Tunisia: arrest of a strongman of the Islamist-inspired Ennahdha party

Published on : 12/31/2021 – 15:05

The deputy president of Ennahdha, Noureddine Bhiri, close to Rached Ghannouchi, leader of the Islamist-inspired party and bête noire of the head of state, was arrested Friday, December 31, we learned from concordant sources.

“Agents in civilian clothes who were in two cars arrested Noureddine Bhiri while he was going out with his wife from her home in El Manar”, district of Tunis, told AFP lawyer Samir Dilou, deputy. resigned from Ennahdha.

According to the same source, Noureddine Bhiri, a powerful figure in this movement, was “brutally arrested and taken to an unknown destination”. The plainclothes agents also seized the cell phone of his wife Saïda Akremi, a lawyer by profession.

No official source was available to give details of the reasons for this arrest.

In a statement, Ennahdha confirmed the arrest of Noureddine Bhiri, also former Minister of Justice, denouncing “a kidnapping and a dangerous precedent which marks the entry of the country into the tunnel of dictatorship”.

Ennahdha has been at the heart of a standoff with President Kaïs Saïed since his coup on July 25 and his decision to suspend Parliament, which this party had controlled for ten years.

In his statement, Ennahdha denounced “the liquidation of opponents outside the framework of the law”.

Since the end of July, several political figures and opponents have denounced a “coup d’état”, warning against President Saïed’s desire to settle accounts with those they designate in his speeches by the term “enemies”, without ever citing them by name.

On December 22, former President Moncef Marzouki, fierce critic of Kaïs Saïed, who lives in France, was sentenced in absentia to four years in prison for having “undermined the security of the State abroad” after to have publicly criticized the Tunisian power from Paris.

With AFP