Total Recall
TUNISIA
Tunisian authorities closed the headquarters of the opposition party Ennahdha Tuesday, a day after its leader was arrested in what government critics have described as efforts by President Kais Saied to quash dissent, Al Jazeera reported.
Party representatives said police raided Ennahdha’s building and ordered its closure for a minimum of three days. They added that other party offices elsewhere in Tunisia have also been shuttered.
The closures come after authorities detained party leader Rached Ghannouchi on Monday for questioning. Government officials confirmed that his arrest came following statements by Ghannouchi, who warned that Tunisia faced a civil war if any of the country’s political forces – including political Islamists and leftists – were excluded.
The detention is the latest in an ongoing crackdown on political opponents and personalities: Since February, authorities in the North African nation have detained more than 20 individuals, including politicians, businessmen, and trade unionists.
Saied said those detained were “terrorists” involved in a “conspiracy against state security.”
Ennahdha, a self-styled “Muslim Democrat” party, was the largest in Tunisia’s parliament before Kais Saied dissolved the chamber in July 2021.
Since then, Saied has been ruling by decree, having seized wide-reaching powers through a series of moves opponents have dubbed a “coup.”
The president’s opponents accuse him of restoring authoritarian rule in Tunisia, the only democracy to emerge from the Middle East’s Arab Spring protests more than a decade ago.
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