About 300 protesters gathered in Tunis demanding the release of detained former ministers, businessmen and other opposition members.
Hundreds of supporters of Tunisia’s main opposition coalition have rallied to demand the release of some 20 imprisoned opponents of the President. Kais Saied.
Amid a heavy security deployment, the opposition coalition known as the Front for National Salvation held a Sunday vigil in front of the municipal theater in central Tunis.
As many as 300 protesters, many carrying photos of what they call “political prisoners”, have gathered to defend former ministers, business figures and others arrested since February.
They also raised slogans accusing Saied of tyranny and undermining the country and economy, and challenged the government. arrest and trial campaign between the opposition.
“Freedom! Freedom!” they chanted, as they demanded an election before the scheduled date of October 2024.
In March, the European Parliament, in a non-binding resolution, criticized the “arbitrary drift” of Saied, who said those arrested were “terrorists” engaged in a “conspiracy against national security”.
‘Reject tyranny’
Tunisia was the only democracy to emerge from the Arab Spring uprisings in the region more than a decade ago, but Saied suspended in July 2021, then dissolved, parliament as part of the of his campaign for power allowed him to rule by decree.
Among those arrested were Ghannouchi creekhead of the Muslim-inspired Ennahdha party, the largest party in parliament before Saied took power.
“They were jailed because they exercised their legal right to dissent,” Ahmed Nejib Chebbi, head of the Front for National Salvation, told protesters.
On Friday, counter-terrorism officers questioned Ghannouchi for three hours as part of an investigation into allegations of “conspiracy against state security”.
Abdul Latif al-Makki, the former health minister, told Al Jazeera that authorities had arrested opposite scarecrow with the aim of “throwing them to prison and silencing their voices against tyranny”.
“The Front for National Salvation will continue to move against the coup authorities and put pressure on them to release the prisoners,” al-Makki said.
Al-Makki expressed his opposition to the continued “systematic targeting of opponents through political trials not based on any evidence of guilt”.
He also said that Saied only succeeded since emergency measures was imposed about two years ago to suppress the opposition, deprive the judiciary of independence, undermine democracy, and establish tyranny and injustice.
