Tunis, February 14. Opposition groups against the accumulation of power by President Kais Said on Tuesday expressed concern over the campaign of arrests that over the past three days has reached businessmen, judges and politicians of different political persuasions.
“The campaigns of blind arrests against the Tunisian opposition cross all limits”, denounce about thirty groups linked to the so-called “Citizens against the coup”, as they call the emergency regime in which Saïd governs since July 25, 2021.
Yesterday Monday, the director general of the independent Mosaïque FM radio station, Noureddine Boutar, was arrested at his home, as well as the former Tunisian Minister of Justice and vice-president of the Islamist party Ennahda, Noureddine Bhiri, and Lazhar Akermi, former leader of lay formation, Nidá Tunis.
Over the weekend, influential businessman close to former dictator Zine el Abidine Ben Ali, Kamel Eltaief; a former senior figure in the Islamist party, Abdelhamid Jelassi; former Ettakatol party leader Jayam Turki; and two of the 57 magistrates challenged by the president a year earlier.
Most of the arrests these days have taken place in private homes without the motives being known at the time of the arrest and officers have conducted searches and seized equipment from the homes, the lawyers said.
The National Salvation Front, a coalition of the main opposition parties to the dissolved Tunisian parliament, denounced a “repressive policy, which will only aggravate and rot the general crisis”.
For their part, the Ettakatol, Attayar (Democratic Current), Workers’ Party, Al Jomhoury (Republican Party) and Al Qotb parties issued a joint statement condemning the “arbitrary and abusive arrests of political, civil and trade union activists”.
Earlier this month, a senior member of the UGTT, Tunisia’s main union, was arrested after leading a nationwide strike by toll workers – run by a state-owned company – to demand better wages.
Since Saïd took full powers, the civil and military justice system has opened numerous investigations and adopted precautionary measures – house arrest and a ban on leaving the territory – against senior officials of institutions, magistrates, businessmen and deputies for alleged cases of corruption and other related to freedom of expression. EFE
lfp/jac