The leader of the opposition National Salvation Front in Tunisia, Reda Belhaj, said that the arrests carried out by the Tunisian authorities against opposition figures aim to abort the movements of the political and trade union opposition to unite their ranks in order to resist what he called the coup carried out by President Kais Saied.
Tunisia has recently witnessed an escalation of arrests, including opposition politicians, judicial and media figures, and former ministers, which the opposition considered practical evidence of the dictatorial nature of Saeed's rule.
According to Belhadj, President Saeed learned of the opposition project and the ongoing dialogues between them to unite their ranks with the aim of resisting what he called the coup, and of the Tunisian General Labor Union initiative, which aims to return to democracy and return to the 2014 constitution after its revision, and therefore he - that is, Saeed - launched a campaign of random arrests against political opponents, trade unionists and others. .
The guest of the episode (23/2/2023) of the “Beyond the News” program revealed that despite the campaign of suspensions and arrests, the Tunisian opposition is expanding, and its demands are approaching one another.
The leader of the Salvation Front also attributed the measures affecting the opposition to the Tunisian president’s endeavor to direct public opinion to another direction after the failure of the road map he drew, whether regarding the referendum or the elections. opponents.
He believed that the Tunisian judiciary today is directly subject to the president and the Minister of Justice, and is subjected to great pressure and implements the instructions drawn up by the executive authority, referring to violations committed against detainees and detainees.
Belhaj referred to the case of Judge Al-Bashir Al-Akrami, who was arrested on February 12, before being later housed in a mental hospital in the capital, Tunis, stressing that his case raises ambiguity.
The Tunisian judiciary is independent
On the other hand, lawyer and law researcher Caesar Sayyah stressed that President Saied does not interfere in the judiciary and does not employ it politically, and that Tunisia has an independent judicial authority under the law, and has full authority to carry out its duties.
Regarding Amnesty International's call to the Tunisian president to stop trying civilians before military courts and to stop what it described as his attacks on the right to a fair trial, Sayyah said that the president has nothing to do with the matter, and that the pleadings include explicit laws that refer some civilians to military courts.
Regarding the arrests and arrests of some opponents, he said that the fiercest opponents are in the Tunisian capital, demanding certain rights and attacking the president, and they were not arrested because - according to the speaker - they are practicing their opposition within the framework of democracy and transparency.
Saeed had said earlier that there were frenzied campaigns by people hired from abroad to strike the Tunisian state, as he put it.
He also said that what he described as cancerous cells must be eliminated within the state, adding that these cells are present in the body of the state, and they must be held accountable before the Tunisian people and the law applied to everyone, as he put it.