Ahmad 
Habib Tarkhani, spokesman for the Tunis Court of Appeals, announced that the court’s terrorism chamber had referred 12 defendants to the judiciary in the case of “conspiracy against state security.”
Tarkhani said that “the indictment chamber decided, last Thursday, to refer each of Munther Al-Ounissi, vice president of the Ennahda movement (arrested), Rafik Abdel Salam (former foreign minister), Scheherazade Okasha (journalist), leaders in the Ennahda movement Ahmed Kaaloul, Tarek Boubahri and Reda Idris, Moaz Khereiji (son of the head of the Ennahda movement), Mohamed Fathi Ayadi, a leader in the Dignity Coalition Party, Maher Zeid, and blogger Mohamed Sami,” according to the official Tunisian News Agency.
Tarkhani pointed out that all these defendants are on the run except for Munther Al-Ounissi, who is the only one arrested in this case and detained since September 2023, and there are other defendants who will be referred in a state of release, without specifying their identity.
Tarkhani confirmed that all the defendants will be prosecuted for several charges of a “terrorist” nature.
“The aforementioned indictment chamber rejected the request for release against Munther al-Ounissi, who is the only one arrested in connection with this case,” he said.
Last September, the investigative judge at the Anti-Terrorism Judicial Pole issued a prison order against Al-Ounissi, against the background of a leaked audio recording attributed to him and charged him with not informing about the commission of terrorist crimes and linking with foreign parties to harm the interests of the state.
These developments come amid a campaign of arrests of Tunisian opposition leaders and activists since February 2023.
The opposition sees these exceptional measures as “a coup against the 2014 constitution and the consecration of absolute autocracy,” while another party sees them as a correction of the course of the 2011 revolution that overthrew President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
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