Member of Parliament (dissolved), Rached Khiari, was arrested on August 3 and imprisoned pursuant to a judgment in absentia rendered against him by a Military Tribunal in April 2021
Lawyer Mokhtar Jemai, member of the defense committee of former deputy Rached Khiari, estimated on Tuesday that his client “is in forced detention and that he has gone to the stage of mistreatment” by holding several hearings in multiple courts in a single day.
This is what emerges from Jemai’s intervention at a press conference held by the Khiari defense committee in the capital, Tunis, to inform public opinion of developments in the case for which he was stopped.
According to Jemai, Khiari was “tried in two cases, the first concerning an investigation into the exposure of blind children to bullying, while the second was tried by the military court on the grounds that Khiari raised an issue related to the presence of an American military base in one of the Tunisian barracks, but it was not he who published it, but a person residing abroad.
For her part, the vice-president of the dissolved parliament, Samira Chaouachi, declared during the same press conference that “the Khiari trial is only one link in a whole series aimed at all those who have said no to coup authority, including elected officials, political parties and the political elite.”
Khiari was arrested on August 3 in the capital and imprisoned in execution of a judgment in absentia rendered by the Permanent Military Tribunal of Tunis.
In April 2021, the military court issued a summons against Khiari, who took refuge behind his immunity and refused to be tried by a military court, and remained at large until President Kais Saïed suspends Parliament on July 25, 2021.
Rached Khiari faces several charges, including having “acted in such a way as to weaken the morale of the army, as well as the obedience to the leaders or the respect due to them, and of having criticized the actions of the general command of the army or its officials in a way that undermines their dignity.”
President Saied’s campaign manager, Faouzi Daas, confirmed last year that military justice “has opened an investigation into allegations made by Khiari accusing the president of receiving US funding to boost his chances of winning. the presidency”, which the embassy later denied.
