Tunis: Three well-known politicians and a well-known businessman have been ordered held in pre-trial custody by a Tunisian anti-terrorism investigative judge, according to their defence team, amid an ongoing crackdown on opposition figures.
Among the more than a dozen prominent critics of President Kais Saied who have been detained this month, the four men are the first to go before a court.
The main accusation against businessman Kamel Ltaif, former Ennahda party official Abdelhamid Jlassi, former Finance Minister Khayam Turki, and Republican Party leader Issam Chebbi is conspiring against state security.
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Lawyers for them and some of the other people in custody claimed that because conditions for a fair trial had not been met, they would boycott the hearings.
According to his son, Ghazi Chaouachi, another well-known opponent of Saied, was also detained by police late on Friday.
The arrests mark the most severe crackdown on Saied's detractors since he shut down the parliament and seized most of the government's authority in 2021, transitioned to rule by decree, and drafted a new constitution that was approved by a referendum last year.
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Activists and political parties, including Ennahda, the largest in the 2019-elected parliament and a participant in several coalition governments, have criticised Saied's actions.
They have cautioned that Saied's other actions, such as seizing control of the judiciary and passing legislation that calls for imprisonment for those found guilty of posting false information online, portend a return to autocracy in Tunisia.
Saied has denied becoming a dictator and claimed that his actions in 2021 were legitimate and required to keep Tunisia from falling into chaos. He has referred to his opponents as terrorists, criminals, and traitors, and he has said that judges who don't convict them should be seen as complicit.
The chief of Tunisia's leading independent media outlet Mosaique FM has also been detained; however, the police, Interior Ministry, and Justice Ministry have not made any comments on the arrests.
According to Saied, some of those in custody are responsible for the food shortages that economists attribute to a problem with the state's finances. A senior member of the influential UGTT labour union and several police officers have also been detained by the police on separate charges.
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Salsabil Chellali, the director of HRW in Tunisia, observed that President Saied "is now attacking his critics with utter abandonment." "Saied is referring to them as terrorists and abandoning the pretence of putting together credible evidence."
In addition, France urged Tunisia to safeguard "democratic gains" made since the nation's revolution. The French Foreign Ministry released a statement saying that France "expresses its concern at the recent waves of arrests and urges the Tunisian authorities to ensure respect for individual and public freedoms, in particular freedom of expression."
