(Tunis) The vice-president of Ennahdha Noureddine Bhiri, close to Rached Ghannouchi, at the head of the party of Islamist inspiration and bête noire of the head of state, was arrested Friday, we learned from sources concordant.
“Agents in civilian clothes who were in two cars arrested Noureddine Bhiri while he was going out with his wife from her home in El Manar”, district of Tunis, said lawyer Samir Dilou, deputy resigned from Ennahdha .
According to the same source, Mr. Bhiri, a powerful figure within this movement, was “brutally arrested and taken to an unknown destination” by plainclothes agents who also seized the mobile phone of his wife Saïda Akremi, lawyer of profession.
No official source was available to give details of the reasons for this arrest.
In a statement released Friday evening, the Interior Ministry announced that it had ordered house arrest against two people, without naming names.
This “preventive measure was dictated by the need to preserve national security,” he added without giving further details.
Ennahdha confirmed the arrest of Mr. Bhiri, also former Minister of Justice, denouncing, in a press release, “a kidnapping and a dangerous precedent which marks the entry of the country into the tunnel of the dictatorship”.
“Mr. Bhiri was kidnapped and violently assaulted in front of his neighbors and his wife […], we do not yet know where he was taken, ”lamented to the press Zeineb Brahmi, legal officer of Ennahdha.
The same source indicated that the civil and military prosecutors had assured the political party that they had given no instructions for the arrest of Mr. Bhiri.
“During his kidnapping, plainclothes officers said they were following instructions,” added Mr.me Brahmi.
President “Kais Saied and Interior Minister Taoufik Charfeddine take responsibility for what happened,” Mohamed Goumani, head of Ennahdha, told a press conference in Tunis.
Deploring “intimidation to scare” people who oppose Mr. Saied’s coup, he assured that his party will “face with all the political tools available”.
Without commenting on this arrest, the Presidency of the Republic announced on Friday on its official page a presidential pardon in favor of more than 1,300 detainees on the occasion of the New Year.
Ennahdha has been at the heart of a standoff with President Kais Saied since his July 25 coup and his decision to suspend the parliament that this party had controlled for ten years.
In his press release, Ennahdha denounced “the liquidation of opponents outside the framework of the law”.
Several politicians and opponents denounced a “coup”, warning against a desire by President Saied to settle scores with those they designate in his speeches by the term “enemies”, without ever citing them by name. .
On December 22, former President Moncef Marzouki, a fierce critic of Mr. Saied living in France, was sentenced in absentia to four years in prison for having “undermined the security of the State abroad” after having publicly criticized the Tunisian power from Paris.