As the Tunisian presidential regime has hardened in recent months, three political opponents were arrested this Saturday, February 11, 2023.
Tunisian police arrested this Saturday, February 11, 2023, the businessman Kamel Eltaïef, very influential in political circles and for a long time the gray eminence of ousted President Zine el Abidine Ben Ali, as well as two opponents, their lawyers said.
Kamel Eltaïef was arrested at his home in the northern suburbs of Tunis, said his lawyer Nizar Ayed without being able to provide further details immediately.
The police also arrested two opponents: Abdelhamid Jelassi, former leader of the Islamist-inspired movement Ennahdha, a pet peeve of President Kais Saied, and political activist Khayam Turki.
One of the organizers of the “medical coup”
Kamel Eltaïef, 68, was among the organizers of the “medical coup” that removed Tunisia’s first president Habib Bourguiba from power for senility in 1987 in favor of Zine el Abidine Ben Ali.
This man in the shadows is seen by many Tunisians, especially supporters of Ennahdha, as one of the symbols of corruption since the reign of Ben Ali.
A lobbyist with strong diplomatic connections, Kamel Eltaïef has made and broken careers in the police and on the political scene.
The man was Ben Ali’s eminence grise during the first years of his regime. He fell out of favor after trying to convince him not to marry Leïla Trabelsi.
After the fall of Ben Ali in 2011, the businessman moved closer to the opposition and kept his entries in the Ministry of the Interior under the government of then Prime Minister Béji Caïd Essebsi.
In 2012, he was prosecuted for “conspiracy against state security” but no charges were brought against him and the case was closed in 2014.
The Ennahdha movement in the viewfinder
On Saturday evening, seven police officers searched the house of former Ennahdha movement leader Abdelhamid Jelassi and confiscated his mobile phone before arresting him, the party told AFP without further details.
According to local media, Abdelhamid Jelassi is suspected of “conspiracy against state security”.
A few hours earlier, political activist, Khayam Turki had also been arrested, according to his lawyer Abdelaziz Essid.
“Around 6 a.m., he (Khayam Turki) was arrested by police officers who searched his house before taking him to an unknown destination,” Essid told AFP.
Khayam Turki was not the subject of “any legal proceedings” likely to justify his arrest, added the lawyer.
Denouncing his arrest, Ennahdha called in a press release for the “immediate” release of Khayam Turki.
The National Salvation Front (FSN), the main opposition coalition, condemned for its part “a repressive policy” also demanding the release of Khayam Turki.
Khayam Turki, 58, comes from the Ettakatol party, a small social-democratic formation that allied with the Ennahdha movement within the so-called “troika” cabinet between 2011 and 2014.
His name had circulated as a possible candidate to be head of government after the resignation of former Prime Minister Elyes Fakhfakh in 2020.
Kais Saied hardens the tone
Since the coup by President Kais Saied who assumed full powers in July 2021, several politicians have been the subject of legal proceedings denounced by the opposition as settling political scores.
The opposition accuses Kais Saied of establishing an authoritarian regime repressing freedoms and threatening democracy in Tunisia, where the first revolt of the Arab Spring overthrew the dictatorship of Ben Ali in 2011.
