Tunisia begins trial of prominent opposition figures on conspiracy charges

Tunisian activists protested on Tuesday near a Tunis court where prominent figures face charges of conspiring against state security in a trial that the opposition says is fabricated and a symbol of President Kais Saied’s authoritarian rule, Reuters has reported.

Forty people, including high-profile politicians, businessmen and journalists, are being prosecuted in the case. More than 20 have fled abroad.

Rights groups say that the trial highlights Saied’s full control over the judiciary since he dissolved the elected parliament in 2021 and began ruling by decree before later dissolving the independent Supreme Judicial Council.

Some politicians were arrested in 2023 in a crackdown on opposition ranks, including Ghazi Chaouachi, Issam Chebbi, Jawahar Ben Mbrak, Abdelhamid Jlassi and Khyam Turki. The former presidential chief of staff, Nadia Akacha, and former head of intelligence Kamel Guizani, are among the accused. They live abroad.

“We are facing the biggest judicial scandals,” said Bassam Trifi, the head of the Tunisian Human Rights League. “It is one of the darkest injustices in Tunisia’s history.”

Saied said in 2023 that these politicians were “traitors and terrorists” and that the judges who acquitted them were their accomplices.

The opposition leaders arrested in the case accuse Saied of staging a coup in 2021 and say that the allegations are fabricated to stifle the opposition and establish a one-man, repressive rule. They say that they were preparing an initiative aimed at uniting the fragmented opposition to face the democratic setback in the cradle of the Arab Spring uprisings.

Chaima Issa, a senior official in the Salvation Front, the main opposition coalition, is among eight people appearing before the judge while they are free in the trial’s first session.

“This trial is unjust and a disgrace to the authorities. It is a purely political case that has included all political leaders,” Issa told Reuters before the hearing. “Our ‘crime’ is that we oppose the regime. I will continue the struggle at any cost.”

Most of the leaders of political parties in Tunisia are in prison, including Abir Moussi, leader of the Free Constitutional Party, and Rached Ghannouchi, the head of Ennahda party. Two of Saied’s most prominent opponents, they have been in prison since 2023 in other cases.

The government says that there is democracy in Tunisia and Saied says he will not be a dictator. But he also says that no one is above the law and what he calls a corrupt elite must be held accountable.

READ: Ex-Tunisia president slams mass trial of opposition figures in ‘conspiracy case’