The Tunisian Ennahda Movement announced in a statement on Thursday evening the arrest of former president of the movement Sadiq Chourou, who spent 20 years in the prisons of the regime of the late President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, most of them in solitary confinement.
Radio Mosaique said a security unit specializing in counter-terrorism arrested Ennahda leader and former member of the Constituent Assembly Sadiq Chourou pending investigations into a case of a "terrorist nature" at the Anti-Terrorism Judicial Pole.
Ennahda leader Riad al-Shuaibi said in a Facebook post that security services had taken Chouro to an unknown destination, without enabling him to communicate with a lawyer or his family so far.
A few days ago, a Tunisian court sentenced Ennahda leader Rached Ghannouchi to one year in prison and a fine.
Chouro was investigated in the so-called "youth deportation" case and was kept on release.
Sadiq Chourou, a university professor of chemistry, previously assumed the presidency of Ennahda in the nineties and spent 20 years in the prisons of the regime of the late President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
After the Tunisian revolution, Chourou was elected to Ennahda's Constituent Assembly before retiring from politics for health reasons nine years ago.
Since February 11, the Tunisian authorities have carried out a campaign of arrests that included leaders and activists in the opposition, which considers the exceptional measures a coup against the constitution of the revolution (the 2014 constitution) and the consecration of absolute autocracy, while another party sees them as a correction to the course of the 2011 revolution, which overthrew then-President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
Ennahda and the rest of the opposition forces usually deny the veracity of the accusations against their leaders, considering them political prosecutions, while President Kais Saied accused detainees of "conspiring against state security."