The Tunisian police on Monday closed the headquarters of the Superior Council of the Judiciary (CSM), a measure deemed “illegal” by its president, two days after its dissolution on a decision by the Head of State Kais Saied.
“Police forces prevented any access to the headquarters of the CSM on Monday,” Youssef Bouzakher, the president of this judicial oversight body, told AFP.
According to AFP journalists on the spot, the headquarters of the CSM was surrounded Monday morning by a police force.
“We don’t know who made this illegal decision, but the deployed police said they were following instructions,” Bouzakher added.
“This illegal closure and without any legal reason proves that we have reached a dangerous stage where the executive power is seizing state institutions and the judiciary using force,” he lamented.
Warning of “a danger against the judiciary, rights, and freedoms”, Mr. Bouzakher assured that the CSM “will continue to exercise its functions”.
President Saied, who assumed full powers in July, announced the dissolution of the CSM, a body he accuses of bias, on the night of Saturday to Sunday.
“By deciding to dissolve the CSM, President Saied demonstrates his determination to remove the last line of defense of his one-man power in Tunisia: the judiciary,” the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) said in a statement released. Monday.
For this organization, the international community “must not turn a blind eye to this latest attack on the rule of law and must urge the president to return to constitutional order in Tunisia”.
The CSM, an independent body created in 2016 to appoint judges, is made up of 45 magistrates, two-thirds of who are elected by Parliament and who themselves appoint the remaining third.
Mr. Saied assured Monday that he had no intention of interfering in the functioning of justice after the dissolution of the CSM.
“I would like to reassure everyone in Tunisia and abroad that I will not interfere in the work of justice and that I resorted to this dissolution only because it had become necessary”, he said. said while receiving Prime Minister Najla Bouden, according to a video of the meeting released by the presidency.
“I will not intervene in any case or appointment,” he added, saying that the CSM had been instrumentalized by some “for personal or political ends”.
The European Union said on Monday it was “concerned” by President Saied’s decision to dissolve the (CSM) and insisted on “the importance of judicial independence”.
