The former Tunisian justice minister, Noureddine Bhiri, a strong man of the Islamist-inspired Ennahdha party, hospitalized after his arrest, refuses to eat and take medicine, told AFP on Monday (January 3rd). source of a delegation that visited him.

This delegation made up of five people - three from the Body for the Prevention of Torture (INPT, independent authority) and two from the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights - was able to enter the Bizerte hospital on Sunday evening. , in the north, where Noureddine Bhiri was admitted two days after his arrest on Friday.

The delegation's visit, confirmed by another source who also participated, took place on Sunday between midnight and 1 a.m.

"He is not in a critical situation at the moment," said the source who participated in the visit.

Noureddine Bhiri, 63, "is alive and lucid, [he] is taken care of in a single room, in the cardiology department of the hospital," she said.

But "since Friday, Noureddine Bhiri refuses all food and medicine, that's why he was transferred to the hospital where he is under close surveillance", according to this source.

Noureddine Bhiri is "not infused because it is not possible to administer the second source to him.

Complaint for "kidnapping" against Kaïs Saïed

Sunday evening, several activists and deputies of Ennahdha had affirmed that Noureddine Bhiri was "in critical condition" with "threats to his life" and that he had been "deprived of his drugs".

During a press conference Monday in Tunis, Samir Dilou, lawyer and deputy of Ennahdha, affirmed that the arrest of Noureddine Bhiri was "a political affair and an instrumentalisation of justice".

He announced a complaint for "kidnapping" against President Saïed and the Minister of the Interior, Taoufik Charfeddine.

During the same press conference, the wife of Noureddine Bhiri, Saïda Akremi, affirmed that her husband had "a heart attack and is in intensive care in cardiology at the hospital". 

The lawyer said she refused to go see her husband at the hospital because, according to her, the head of the local security forces wanted her to sign documents beforehand, which she refused.

Noureddine Bhiri suffering from several chronic diseases, including diabetes and hypertension, the medical team would like him to be transferred to a military hospital, fearing that his condition will deteriorate.

A second Ennahda executive locked up in an "undisclosed" location

The INPT, which has the mandate to verify the fate of people deprived of their liberty, took up the case on Saturday to ask the Ministry of the Interior for information on the place of detention of Noureddine Bhiri and another executive Ennahdha, Fathi Baldi, arrested at the same time as him.

No information was available on Monday on Fathi Baldi's whereabouts.

The INPT deplored in an official statement and to AFP the "complete silence" of the authorities on the "kept secret" place of the "house arrest" of the two men and denounced the arrests, made for " preventive "without clear motives or legal proceedings.

With AFP

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