According to the Tunis Afrique Press (TAP) news agency, a Tunisian court has sentenced 21 well-known politicians and former top officials, including opposition leader Rached Ghannouchi, to jail terms.
The rulings on Tuesday represent President Kais Saied’s most recent expansion of his crackdown on critics and political opponents.
Ghannouchi, the Ennahdha party leader, was given a maximum sentence of 14 years in prison. Former prime minister Youssef Chahed and former minister of foreign affairs Rafik Abdessalem Bouchlaka were among the others who received a 35-year absentia sentence.
Nadia Akacha, Saied’s former chief of staff, was also given a 35-year prison term in absentia, the TAP reported.
The defendants are accused of conspiring against internal state security and forming and forming a “terrorist” organization.
The former foreign minister, Bouchlaka, criticized the sentences on Tuesday, saying that the Tunisian government has “becomedy in front of the world with its immaturity, recklessness, and craziness.”
In a social media post, Bouchlaka wrote that “this lying, deceptive coup regime will leave like the dictators, tyrants, and fraudsters that left before it.”
Since Saied suspended the elected parliament and formally ruled by decree in 2021, many opposition leaders, journalists, and critics of him have been imprisoned, according to the opposition.
Said has been accused of using the police and the judiciary to harm his political rivals by critics. Many warn that the democratic gains made in the Arab Spring’s birthplace since the revolution that overthrew Tunisian leader Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in 2011 are being steadily resisted.
Saied refutes the accusations and claims that his actions are legitimate and intended to end years of chaos and widespread corruption.
Ennahdha disputes the group’s accusations. After the uprising of 2011, Ghannouchi and former President Beji Caid Essebsi reached a power-sharing agreement to bring Tunisia back to democracy.
Ennahda’s Tunisian headquarters was shut down by the Tunisian government last year. Gannouchi, 84, is already serving time in prison for political-related offenses.
He was given a 22-year sentence in February for “plotting against state security.”
Source: Aljazeera
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