Tunisia’s anti-terrorism police have detained Ali Laarayedh, a former prime minister and senior official in the Ennahdha party, a move the opposition party have called a “political attack” by the country’s president.
Laarayedh, who was prime minister from 2013 to 2014, was interrogated for 14 hours on Monday on suspicion of “sending jihadists to Syria,” according to his lawyers, who announced the detention on Tuesday.
In a statement, Ennahdha condemned the conditions of the investigation carried out by the Anti-Terrorism Squad, describing it as “a form of torture, abuse, a flagrant violation of human rights and an undermining of dignity in fabricated cases and malicious accusations."
There have been growing international fears that President Kais Saied is reversing a decade of democratic progress in Tunisia following the North African country’s revolution against longtime strongman Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in 2011.
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