The Tunisian authorities on Tuesday closed the offices of the Islamo-conservative Ennahdha movement throughout the country, the day after the arrest of its leader Rached Ghannouchi, said a party official.
"
A police force came to the party's main headquarters (in Tunis) and ordered everyone there to get out before closing it
," one of the leaders of the party told AFP. Ennahdha, Riadh Chaibi.
“
The police also closed other party offices everywhere else in the country and prohibited any meetings in these premises
,” he added.
This measure was taken the day after the arrest of party leader Rached Ghannouchi in his home in Tunis.
Mr Ghannouchi, 81, who led the dissolved parliament, is the most prominent opponent to be arrested since President Kais Saied's coup seized full power in July 2021. His arrest comes after statements reported by the media, in which Mr. Ghannouchi affirmed this weekend that Tunisia would be threatened with a “
civil war
” if political Islam, from which his party originated, were eliminated there.
“Conspiracy against state security”
A source at the Interior Ministry quoted by Tunisian media confirmed that Mr. Ghannouchi's arrest was linked to these statements.
According to Mr. Chaibi, two other Ennahdha leaders, Mohamed Goumani and Belgacem Hassan were also arrested on Monday evening.
In addition, the leader of the National Salvation Front (FSN), the main opposition coalition of which Ennahdha is a member, said that the police on Tuesday banned a press conference that his group was about to hold to react to the arrest. by Mr. Ghannouchi.
“
The police prevented the holding of the press conference and deployed barriers in front of the party headquarters
,” Ahmed Néjib Chebbi told AFP.
Since the beginning of February, the authorities have imprisoned more than twenty opponents and personalities including ex-ministers, businessmen and the owner of the most listened to radio station in the country, Mosaïque FM.
President Saied, accused by the opposition of authoritarian drift, described those arrested as "
terrorists
", claiming that they were involved in a "
conspiracy against state security
".
After his coup, Mr. Saied had the Constitution revised to establish an ultra-presidentialist system at the expense of Parliament, which no longer has any real powers, unlike the dissolved Assembly dominated by Ennahdha.
