Tunisian authorities arrested the leader of the Ennahda opposition Islamist movement in a crackdown on rival politicians and critics of the North African country’s increasingly authoritarian president Kais Saied, lawyers said Tuesday.
The crackdown — targeting Tunisian opposition figures, the president’s critics and opponents in the media, judiciary, and business community — comes after a disastrous parliamentary election last month in which only 11% of the voters cast their ballots. The vote was organized by Saied, who is determined to reshape the country’s political system and replace a legislature that he had dissolved in 2021.
Ennahda condemned the arrests and accused Saied’s government of “abducting and prosecuting” the president’s opponents to “distract from the economic and political crisis,” according to a statement the movement issued late Monday. It called for an immediate release of all who have been held in an “illegal detention.”
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