Tunisia arrests opposition party official in continuing crackdown on critics

TUNIS: A leader of Tunisia’s Islamist-inspired opposition party Ennahdha was arrested Saturday, his party said in a statement on Facebook.
The party, whose chief Rached Ghannouchi has been in jail since April last year, did not give any reason for the arrest.
“Ajami Lourimi, the secretary-general of the Ennahdha Party, was detained without judicial permission along with two companions in Borj Al Amrim,” around 37 kilometers (23 miles) west of the capital Tunis, the statement said.
Ennahdha was the largest party in parliament until President Kais Saied dissolved the legislature in July 2021.
He has since ruled by decree in the only democracy to emerge from the Arab Spring uprisings that swept the region more than a decade ago.
Last September, two leaders of Ennahdha, former prime minister Hamadi Jebali and Mondher Ounissi, who had served as Ennahdha’s acting chairman since Ghannouchi’s arrest, were arrested.
Saied’s government closed Ennahdha’s offices across Tunisia after Ghannouchi’s arrest over charges related to “terrorism.”
He is the best-known opposition figure imprisoned in Tunisia since Saied dismissed parliament and seized all state power in 2021.
Ennahdha had dominated Tunisian politics since the 2011 revolt that toppled the dictatorship of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and launched the region’s Arab Spring revolts.
Ghannouchi was among more than 20 of Saied’s political opponents and other prominent figures, including former ministers and business executives, arrested early last year.
The arrests came as the North African country readies for its general presidential elections, set to take place in October.
Saied has not yet announced if he will seek another term.