The vice-president of the Islamic movement Ennahda, Noureddine Bhiri, was kidnapped by security agents in civilian clothes and taken to an unknown destination.
This was announced by the Ennahda party itself in a statement posted on its Facebook profile cited by Nova. From what emerged, during the kidnapping, Bhiri’s wife, lawyer Saida al Akrimi, was allegedly assaulted while opposing her husband’s kidnapping. According to the statement, the movement “strongly denounces this dangerous precedent that marks the entry of the country into the tunnel of tyranny and oppression of political opponents by the coup regime. At the moment there is still no reaction from the Tunisian authorities. President Kais Saied, accused by the moderate Islamic party Ennahda of having orchestrated with the freezing of parliament on July 25 a coup d’état, has promised to defend the rights and freedoms won in the Tunisian revolution of 2011. Ennahda, which has the most seats in the suspended parliament, had been banned before the revolution because of its ties to Islamic extremism, but later became the most influential party and a member of successive coalition governments. Due to the severe economic crisis and a political system crippled by inter-party power games and corruption, support for Ennahda declined, and although it came first in the 2019 parliamentary elections, it garnered far fewer votes than in previous years. Since Saied’s intervention in July, several senior politicians and business leaders have been arrested or subjected to prosecution, often for corruption offenses.