Tunis: The second day of a wave of arrests of prominent people, including politicians and a businessman, saw Tunisian police detain two former judges who were fired by President Kais Saied last year, according to a lawyer and local media.

Anouar Awled Ali, a lawyer involved in the cases, told Reuters that police detained Bechir Akremi and Tayeb Rached, two of the numerous judges and members of the judiciary dismissed in 2022.

According to the local Mosaique FM radio network, Akremi's arrest was related to the probe into the murder of political activist Chokri Belaid ten years ago. Rached's arrest, it continued, was motivated by allegations of financial corruption.

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Police detained a number of people on suspicion of conspiring to compromise state security on Saturday. Khayam Turki, a former finance minister, Abd El Hamid Jlassi, a former senior Ennahda official, and Kamel Ltaif, a businessman with connections to previous coalition governments, were all detained.

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Requests for comment regarding the arrests were not immediately answered by an Interior Ministry spokesperson. The largest opposition group, Ennahda, claimed the arrests were made to intimidate the president of Tunisia's critics.

Since Saied seized the majority of the country's power in 2021 and began taking steps to establish absolute control over the judiciary, rights groups have expressed growing concern about the state of political freedoms in Tunisia.

Saied's political adversaries, whom he has branded traitors, have accused him of staging a coup with the intention of destroying the democracy established following a 2011 revolution.
The president has refuted these charges, claiming that his actions were legal and necessary to keep Tunisia from destabilizing. He has vowed to protect the liberties and rights won during the revolution.

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Authorities have detained or launched investigations into a number of Saied's political rivals in recent months.