The Tunisian Islamo-conservative party Ennahdha, a pet peeve of President Kaïs Saïed, announced on Wednesday March 15 the arrest of its communications manager.
Abdelfattah Taghouti was arrested on Tuesday evening by a unit of the National Guard (gendarmerie), the party said in a statement, calling for his "
immediate release
".
The movement denounced an "
unjust
" arrest which is part of "
a campaign of arbitrary arrests which aims to divert attention from the failure of power
" to bring the country out of its socio-economic crisis. .
Read alsoIn Tunisia, anger is building up against President Kaïs Saïed
Arrests of “terrorists”
The authorities have since February arrested several Ennahdha leaders, ex-ministers, businessmen and the director of Tunisia's most popular private radio station.
President Saïed presented those arrested as "
terrorists
", accusing them of "
plotting against state security
".
This wave of arrests, unprecedented since President Saïed assumed full powers on July 25, 2021, has been described by Amnesty International as a “politically motivated
witch hunt
”.
Since the summer of 2021, NGOs and the main opposition parties have denounced an "
authoritarian drift
" in Tunisia, shaking the young democracy that emerged from the first revolt of the Arab Spring in 2011.
