Lawyer and media report police in Tunisia detain former judges who had been fired
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Sulaiman
- . February 13, 2023
- . Update: February 13, 2023 8:02 pm
The second day of a wave of arrests of notable persons, including politicians and a businessman, saw Tunisian police detain two former judges who were fired by President Kais Saied last year, according to a lawyer and local media.
Anouar Awled Ali, a lawyer involved in the proceedings, told Reuters that police detained Bechir Akremi and Tayeb Rached, two of the numerous judges and officials of the judiciary dismissed in 2022.
According to the local Mosaique FM radio network, Akremi’s detention was related to the probe into the murder of political activist Chokri Belaid ten years ago. Rached’s arrest, it continued, was motivated by allegations of financial corruption.
Police apprehended a number of persons on suspicion of conspiring to compromise state security on Saturday. Khayam Turki, a former finance minister, Abd El Hamid Jlassi, a former senior Ennahda official, and Kamel Ltaif, a businessman with connections to previous coalition governments, were all detained.
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Requests for comment regarding the arrests were not immediately answered by an Interior Ministry official. The largest opposition group, Ennahda, claimed the arrests were made to intimidate the president of Tunisia’s critics.
Since Saied seized the majority of the country’s power in 2021 and began taking steps to establish absolute control over the court, rights groups have expressed growing alarm about the state of political liberties in Tunisia.
Saied’s political adversaries, whom he has branded traitors, have accused him of staging a coup with the intention of destroying the democracy established during a 2011 revolution.
The president has refuted these charges, claiming that his actions were legal and necessary to keep Tunisia from destabilising. He vowed to protect the liberties and rights secured during the revolution. Authorities have recently detained or launched investigations into a number of Saied’s political rivals.
