Riyad Al-Shuaibi, political advisor to the head of the Ennahda movement in Tunisia, said that the security authorities imposed house arrest on the head of the movement’s Shura Council, Abdel Karim Al-Harouni, in his home, starting tonight.
Al-Shuaibi believed that the measure against Al-Harouni represents a target for democracy and freedoms, and that what he described as the power of the coup works to exclude the movement with deliberate and successive steps.
For its part, the opposition National Salvation Front described Harouni’s placement under house arrest as arbitrary, and said in a statement that the decision comes in the context of arresting the historical leaders of the Ennahda movement, closing all its headquarters, and threatening its cadres and activists. It also comes in the context of targeting democracy and freedoms in Tunisia, and a crude attempt to interfere in internal life. parties and influence their sovereign decisions.
The Front expresses “its full solidarity with Harouni and with the Ennahda movement and its sovereign institutions, and reminds that condoning the violation of constitutional rights and freedoms and trampling on the rule of law is considered participation in it, and all components of Tunisian society will pay for it without exception.”
This decision comes hours before Ennahda’s Shura Council convenes today, Sunday, to discuss a number of issues, most notably the preparations for holding its electoral conference this fall.
Harouni heads the Shura Council; The highest institution in the Ennahda Party, which was the largest political party in Parliament, which President Kais Saied announced its suspension in 2021.
This year, the police arrested the leader of the Ennahda Party, Rashid Ghannouchi, in addition to a number of party officials. The government also banned meetings in all Ennahda headquarters, and the police closed all party offices, in a move the party said aimed to consolidate authoritarian rule.
Tunisia witnessed a campaign of arrests that included politicians, media figures, activists, judges, and businessmen, as some of them were accused of “conspiring against state security, standing behind crises in the distribution of goods and high prices,” which the opposition denies is true.
Since July 25, 2021, Tunisia has been suffering from an acute political crisis, when the Tunisian president began imposing exceptional measures; These include dissolving the Judiciary and Parliament, issuing legislation by presidential orders, holding early legislative elections, and approving a new constitution through a referendum.
Tunisian forces see these measures as a “coup against the constitution of the revolution (the 2014 constitution), and a consecration of absolute individual rule,” while Saeed – whose presidential term ends in 2024 – said it was “necessary and legal” to save the state from “total collapse.”
