![]() 17, despite opposition vows to boycott them. “Ennahda was the best model political Islam managed to produce,” said Tarik Celenk, a prominent Muslim intellectual in Turkey, where another Islamist party and a close Ennahda ally, the Justice and Development Party led by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has been in power for the past two decades.įew doubt that Saied’s goal is to crush the party and he’s tightening the vise ahead of parliamentary elections that are due to be held on Dec. It was the only one where there was a lot of dissent factored into the system, where there was a dialogue between the regions and the national center and there were shifts in policy based on what the rank and file sought,” said William Lawrence, a former US diplomat and nonresident scholar at the Middle East Institute with sweeping knowledge of the Maghreb. “It was the most democratic party in Tunisia. The probe is part of a broader campaign targeting the party masterminded by Tunisia’s authoritarian President Kais Saied. The outcome of that campaign will have lasting repercussions for the future of Tunisia’s tottering democracy and will likely resonate with political Islamists across the globe. Ghannouchi is due to undergo further questioning on Nov. The dossier is empty,” Kilani told Al-Monitor. Lawyer Abderrazak Kilani, who is defending Ennahda, labeled the investigation a “disgrace.” “There is nothing in the prosecution's case to prove these absurd claims. All three leaders are among some 800 individuals being investigated for supposedly encouraging thousands of Tunisians to take up arms with assorted jihadis in so-called “hotbeds of tension” in Libya and Syria during Ennahda’s first two years at the helm of Tunisia’s first freely elected government that was formed in 2011. Ali Laarayedh, a former prime minister and a fellow Nahdaoui, as party members are known, was held for interrogation as well. Last week, Ennahda’s 81-year old leader, Rached Ghannouchi, was grilled by counterterrorism police, spending 30 hours in different security units over three days. It wasn’t until he was moved to a state hospital after refusing food and drink that Bhiri, a diabetic, discovered he was under “house arrest” because he posed “a threat to Tunisia’s national security.” His ordeal lasted 64 days. “Who are you? Why have you kidnapped me?” he asked his captors repeatedly. I thought to myself, ‘They are Islamic State.’ I was terrified,” Bhiri said.īhiri, 64, a senior figure in the Islam-oriented Ennahda party, was held incommunicado for three days in a heavily guarded shack in a forest outside Tunis where the howls of wolves and grunts of wild boar filled the air. “They shoved me into the back of one of the jeeps. “A group of bearded youths in civilian clothes snatched the car keys out of my wife’s hands and forced us to get out,” Bhiri recalled. With Saida at the wheel, the middle-aged couple was about to set off for work when four blue Ford SUVs screeched around them, blocking their path. TUNIS - On a gray December morning, Noureddine Bhiri and his wife Saida slid into the family car outside their home in Tunis’ El Manar neighborhood. ![]()
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