Opposition leader Ghannouchi, ex-prime minister and former presidential aide sentenced amid President Saied’s crackdown on dissent.
A Tunisian court has handed jail terms to 21 high-profile politicians and former top officials, including opposition leader and ex-Parliament Speaker Rached Ghannouchi, the Tunis Afrique Press (TAP) news agency reports.
The rulings on Tuesday are the latest move in President Kais Saied’s widening crackdown on critics and political opponents.
Ghannouchi, the leader of the Ennahdha party who has been in jail since 2023, was sentenced to up to 14 years in jail. Several others, including former Prime Minister Youssef Chahed and ex-Minister of Foreign Affairs Rafik Abdessalem Bouchlaka, were sentenced in absentia to 35 years.
Nadia Akacha, Saied’s former chief of staff, who was considered a close and influential aide to the president, was also handed a 35-year prison sentence in absentia, according to the TAP.
The charges against the defendants cover a wide range of alleged offences, including forming and joining a “terrorist” organisation and conspiring against internal state security.
On Tuesday, Bouchlaka, the former foreign minister, dismissed the sentences as unserious, saying that the Tunisian government has become a “mockery in front of the world with its immaturity, recklessness and craziness”.
“Sooner or later, this lying, deceptive coup regime will leave like the dictators, tyrants and fraudsters that left before it,” Bouchlaka wrote in a social media post.
Many opposition leaders, some journalists and critics of Saied have been imprisoned since he suspended the elected parliament and began ruling by decree in 2021 – moves the opposition has described as a coup.
Critics have accused Saied of using the judiciary and police to target his political opponents. Many warn that democratic gains in the birthplace of the Arab Spring in the years since the 2011 revolution that toppled longtime Tunisian leader Zine El Abidine Ben Ali are being steadily rolled back.
Saied rejects the accusations and says his actions are legal and aimed at ending years of chaos and rampant corruption.
Ennahdha denies allegations against the group. The party had emerged as one of Tunisia’s largest after the 2011 uprising, and Ghannouchi led a power-sharing agreement with late President Beji Caid Essebsi to transition the country to democracy.
Last year, the Tunisian government closed down Ennahda’s headquarters in Tunis. Ghannouchi, 84, is already serving other jail sentences for charges that his supporters say are political.
In February, he was given a 22-year sentence for “plotting against state security”.
Ennahdha called the ruling “a blatant assault on the independence and impartiality of the judiciary and a blatant politicisation of its procedures and rulings”.
