About 300 protesters rallied in Tunis to demand the release of former ministers, businessmen and other detained opposition members.
Hundreds of supporters of Tunisia’s main opposition coalition have rallied to demand the release of around 20 jailed opponents of President Kais Saied.
Amid a heavy security deployment, the opposition coalition under the National Salvation Front staged a vigil in front of the municipal theater in the center of the capital, Tunis, on Sunday.
Up to 300 protesters, many holding photographs of what they called “political prisoners”, rallied in defense of former ministers, business figures and others detained since February.
They also raised slogans accusing Saied of tyranny and sabotaging the country and economy, and challenged the campaign of arrests and trials among the opposition.
“Freedom! Freedom!” they chanted, as they called for elections before the scheduled date of October 2024.
In March, the European Parliament, in a non-binding resolution, denounced the “authoritarian drift” of Saied, who says the detainees were “terrorists” involved in a “conspiracy against the security of the State”.
“Rejection of tyranny”
Tunisia was the only democracy to emerge from the region’s Arab Spring uprisings more than a decade ago, but in July 2021 Saied suspended and then dissolved parliament as part of a power grab which allowed him to rule by decree.
Among those arrested is Rached Ghannouchi, head of the Islamist-inspired Ennahdha party, which was the largest in parliament before Saied took control.
“They are imprisoned because they exercised their legitimate right to dissent,” Ahmed Nejib Chebbi, who heads the National Salvation Front, told protesters.
Ghannouchi was questioned for three hours by counter-terrorism officers on Friday as part of an investigation into allegations of a “plot against state security”.
Abdul Latif al-Makki, a former health minister, told Al Jazeera that the authorities have detained prominent opposition leaders with the aim of “throwing them in prisons and silencing their voices rejecting tyranny”. .
“The Salvation Front will continue its movements to resist the coup authority and pressure it to release the prisoners,” al-Makki said.
Al-Makki expressed his rejection of the continued “systematic targeting of opponents through political trials that are not based on any proof of guilt.”
He also said that since the emergency measures imposed about two years ago, Saied has only succeeded in suppressing the opposition, attacking the independence of the judiciary, sabotaging democracy and establishing tyranny and injustice.
(Al Jazeera)
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