Political Crackdown Intensifies In Tunisia

A high-profile trial of 40 people, including leading opposition figures, accused of terrorism and other charges began Tuesday in the capital Tunis, part of an ongoing and intensifying crackdown on dissent by the government, the Associated Press reported.

Some of the opposition politicians, former diplomats, business leaders, journalists, lawyers, and human rights defenders are on trial for plotting against state security and belonging to a terrorist group, while others are suspected of illegal connections with foreign parties and diplomats.

Some of the charges carry the death penalty.

Meanwhile, nine of the defendants were deemed by the court as too dangerous to be released from custody, a move protested by their lawyers and demonstrators as violating the suspects’ civil rights.

Protesters gathered outside of the courthouse as the trial began. Some of the defendants had already fled the country, while others spent over two years in pre-trial detention.

During the proceedings, the families of the accused filled the chamber chanting “freedom” and accusing the judiciary of bowing to the government, Al Jazeera reported.

Human rights groups strongly criticized the government for bringing the charges, and the treatment of the accused, with the International Commission of Jurists saying there has been “systematic violations of their rights” that undermine the trial’s legitimacy and impartiality.

The head of the Tunisian League for the Defense of Human Rights called it “one of the darkest injustices in Tunisia’s history.”

Critics of President Kais Saied say the charges are manufactured while Saied, re-elected for a second term last year amid little competition, said the defendants, who accused him of staging a coup in 2021, are “traitors and terrorists.”

This trial is part of an ongoing crackdown against Saied’s political opponents. The former speaker of parliament and the leader of the secular Free Constitutional Party have both been imprisoned since 2023.

Since Saied took office, Tunisia has reversed the freedoms it gained in 2011 after ousting its longtime dictator, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, an act that sparked the series of revolutions across the Middle East that became the Arab Spring. But after coming to power in 2019, Saied then seized total control two years later by dissolving parliament, firing the prime minister, and instituting rule by decree.

Saied has also weakened the judiciary by dismissing judges and dissolving a body that guaranteed judicial independence.

The president’s supporters say his actions are needed to stabilize Tunisia’s struggle with inflation, unemployment, and corruption.