Open letter signatories say Ghannouchi’s arrest is part of a ‘widespread repression’ in Tunisia that has been ongoing since February 2023
Hundreds of influential personalities from the Arab and Muslim world demanded, on Friday, July 28, the release of Rached Ghannouchi, imprisoned for 100 days, and other Tunisian political detainees.
According to the signatories of an open letter to the Tunisian authorities, the arrest of the leader of Ennahdha, the country’s main opposition party, is part of a “widespread crackdown” against dissent that has intensified since February 2023.
More than a dozen opposition figures have been arrested, including judges, politicians, activists and businessmen.
Translation: “Hundreds of influential figures from the Arab and Muslim world have demanded the release of Rached Ghannouchi and other political detainees in Tunisia, 100 days after his arrest.”
“Their only crime is to defy attempts to roll back Tunisia’s democratic gains, restore dictatorship, and halt the progress made by opposition leaders toward building a broad and diverse alliance to defend democracy,” the letter reads.
Among the signatories are leaders, scholars and influential figures from the Muslim world, such as Abdel Rahman ben Farhat, a member of the Algerian Parliament; Abderrahim Chikhi, former president of the Uniqueness and Reform Movement (MUR) in Morocco; and Hussein Ghazi al-Samarrai of the Iraqi Fiqh Council (considered the most influential Sunni authority in Iraq).
Ghannouchi was arrested on April 17 on the orders of a Tunisian judge. He was being investigated for money laundering and inciting violence, charges he denies and his supporters call “political”.
Escalation of repression
“All supporters of the values of freedom must stand with Tunisian democrats as they resist the assault on Tunisian democracy, a source of hope and inspiration in the Arab and Muslim worlds, which cannot be transformed into another source of despair,” the letter adds.
On May 15, Ghannouchi was sentenced in absentia to one year in prison as part of an escalation of authoritarian repression, which has come to affect high-profile figures, since President Kais Saied took office.
Ghannouchi was also the speaker of the Parliament, elected by democratic means, before its dissolution by Kais Saied.
He led a centrist Islamist party that aimed to find common ground with secular Tunisian factions within the administration.
The political leader was convicted of “apology for terrorism” in a case related to a case in which he was heard in February by the judicial counter-terrorism unit before being released.
His hearing followed a complaint filed by a police union which accuses him of inciting Tunisians to kill each other, for having affirmed at the beginning of 2022 during the funeral of an Ennahdha official that the deceased “did not fear the rulers nor tyrants.
Kais Saied, a former constitutional law professor, was democratically elected president in 2019, pledging to root out corruption and break political chaos.
But in 2021 he dissolved parliament and began to consolidate his power. He arrested journalists, activists and political opponents, in what Amnesty International described as a “politically motivated witch hunt”.
In a letter posted online in May, scholars from Europe and North America called for the release of Rached Ghannouchi and all political prisoners in Tunisia, describing the campaign of repression as a “fierce dismantling” of the democratic transition “once promising and inspiring in Tunisia”.
They warned that Tunisia was on the verge of returning to “the darkest times of dictatorship” after the hard-won gains of the 2011 Arab Spring.
