Riad Al-Shuaibi, adviser to the head of the Tunisian Ennahda movement, revealed that the prosecution rejected a request by the country's president, Kais Saied, to issue a prison deposit card against Noureddine El-Beheiry, the deputy head of the movement, who is under house arrest.
Al-Shuaibi said in a post on his official Facebook page, "The President of the Association of Tunisian Young Judges, Judge Murad Al-Masoudi, confirmed that the President of the country asked the Republic's Attorney (the Attorney General) at the Court of First Instance to issue a prison deposit card against the Vice President of the Ennahda Movement (Al-Buhairi), but the Public Prosecutor refused to do so. There is insufficient evidence to convict Al-Buhairi.
It was not possible to obtain an immediate comment from the Tunisian authorities.
And the Minister of Interior, Tawfiq Sharaf El-Din, announced, last Monday, that Al-Buhairi and the former official in the Ministry of Interior, Fathi Al-Baldi, were placed under house arrest on charges related to “suspicion of terrorism” related to the “illegal method” of obtaining Tunisian travel and citizenship documents for a Syrian and his wife.
The "Ennahda" movement (which has the largest parliamentary bloc with 53 deputies out of 217), the al-Buhairi family and his defense staff rejected this accusation, describing it as "politicised" and calling for his immediate release, and blaming the president and his interior minister for responsibility for al-Buhairi's life.
And on Sunday, the authorities transferred Al-Buhairi, 63, to the intensive care unit at the University Hospital "Habib Bougatfa" in Bizerte, after his health deteriorated as a result of his hunger strike to refuse his detention since last December 31.
This case came in the midst of a political crisis that the country has been experiencing since last July 25, when exceptional measures were imposed by President Saeed, including: freezing the powers of Parliament, issuing legislation by presidential decrees, dismissing the prime minister, and appointing new ones.
The majority of political and civil forces, including the Ennahda movement, reject these measures and consider them a "coup against the constitution."
Other forces support it, seeing it as a "correction of the course of the 2011 revolution" that overthrew the rule of (then) President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali (1987-2011).