Tunisian opposition leader Chebbi arrested as crackdown escalates

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By Tarek Amara

TUNIS, Dec 4 (Reuters) – Tunisian police on Thursday arrested top opposition figure Nejib Chebbi to enforce a 12-year jail term on a conviction for conspiracy, his family said, the latest sign of an escalating crackdown on political dissent by President Kais Saied.

Chebbi, 82, has been a prominent opposition figure since the 1970s, throughout the autocratic presidencies of Habib Bourguiba, the country’s first leader, and Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who was toppled in the 2011 pro-democracy uprising.

Last week an appeals court handed jail terms of up to 45 years to dozens of opposition leaders including Chebbi, business figures and lawyers on charges of conspiracy to overthrow Saied, underlining his increasingly authoritarian rule, critics said.

Police have also arrested Chaima Issa to enforce a 20-year prison sentence as well as opposition lawyer Ayachi Hammami, who received a five-year term in the same case. Both have announced an open-ended hunger strike demanding their release.

Forty people were charged in the conspiracy case, one of the largest political prosecutions in Tunisia’s recent history.

Last week, Chebbi told Reuters that he had accepted his pending imprisonment, urging Tunisians to “escalate protests to save democracy, which Saied seeks to suppress”.

“They arrested him, but they will not be able to stop the countdown to the hour of freedom,” his son Louay Chebbi said.

Tunisian security authorities say the defendants, who include the former head of intelligence, Kamel Guizani, tried to destabilise the North African country and overthrow Saied.

Rights groups said the verdict and sentences intensified Saied’s crackdown on political rivals and other opponents since he seized extraordinary powers in 2021. Critics, journalists and activists have been jailed and independent NGOs suspended.

The opposition says the charges are fabricated and aim to crush Saied’s critics through the judiciary.

Saied has said he is fighting years of rampant corruption within the political elite, and that anyone implicated will be held accountable regardless of their name or position. He has denied interfering in the work of the judiciary.

When the conspiracy case was launched in 2023, Saied said the politicians involved were “traitors and terrorists” and that judges who would acquit them were their accomplices.

(Reporting by Tarek Amara; editing by Toby Chopra and Mark Heinrich)