On Thursday, Chebbi was detained at his home days after receiving a 12-year sentence for plotting against the government in a trial that human rights organizations called “sham” and politically motivated.
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The 81-year-old’s daughter claimed police had removed him from their home in a Facebook post.
The arrest was confirmed by his attorney, Amine Bouker, who claimed Tunisia’s “political scene has become frightful.”
Chebbi, one of the co-founders of the nation’s main opposition coalition, the National Salvation Front (FSN), is one of several opposition figures, attorneys, and rights advocates who have been subject to recent arrests and prosecution.
One of Saied’s most prominent critics, who seized a sweeping power in 2021, more than a decade after Tunisia overran Zine El Abidine Ben Ali during the Arab Spring uprisings, is he?
Since then, rights organizations have criticized the president for overseeing a profound rollback of freedoms.
In the so-called “conspiracy case,” dozens of opposition figures received sentences last week that could lead to up to 45 years in prison.
A rights activist and lawyer Ayachi Hammami was detained on Tuesday in response to Chaima Issa’s Saturday arrest. During the trial, they were each sentenced to five and twenty years in prison.
In an interview with Al Jazeera Arabic, Chebbi blasted the verdict against him as “unjust” and with “no legal basis.”
Chebbi claimed that he and other opposition figures who had been ensnared in the crackdown had not broken any laws. Additionally, he criticised the nation’s legal system.
He claimed that there are no judges in place. We have employees who are used to exact revenge on political opponents under the leadership of the political authorities.
Unjustified deeds are the definition.
The case has been described as a “sham trial” that has been the target of numerous human rights violations by Amnesty International.
After the appeal court’s verdict, political activists Chaima Issa, Ahmed Nejib Chebi, and Ayachi Hammami, both of whom have been found guilty, are now facing an “imminent and arbitrary risk of arrest,” according to Sara Hashash, Amnesty’s deputy regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, in a statement last week.
Detainees held “solely for exercising their human rights” must be immediately released, according to her. “The Tunisian authorities must immediately overturn the unfair convictions and sentences against all defendants in the “corruption case.”
The European Parliament urged Tunisia to release “all those detained for exercising their right to freedom of expression, including political prisoners and human rights defenders,” according to a vote taken last week.
Saied, however, criticized the resolution as “blatant interference,” claiming that the European Union could “learn lessons about rights and freedoms from us.”
The National Salvation Front, the coalition Chebbi cofounded, claimed in a statement that the Tunisian government was carrying out a “campaign of political “extermination” against their political opponents following the sentences being handed down last week.
The coalition claimed that the decision to issue the verdicts without interrogations or hearings was a result of the authorities’ concern about exposing the truth and false information and that the trial’s sole goal was to criminalize political activism and remove political figures whose names and credentials have been cited in opposition political activism.
Source: Aljazeera
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