Families of detained Tunisian opposition leaders petition the African Court

Last updated on May 25th, 2023 at 08:37 am

Rached Ghannouchi, the head of the Tunisian opposition, has been arrested, and his daughter, Yusra Ghannouchi, has spoken out against her father’s detention, blaming the present administration of President Kais Saied as being responsible for egregious violations of human rights. She, along with other family members of Tunisian opposition activists jailed in a government crackdown, is seeking the immediate release of her loved ones by bringing a lawsuit to the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights in an effort to get her loved ones back as soon as possible.

The rulings of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights are binding for Tunisia. According to Yusra Ghannouch, “We have also applied for targeted sanctions against Kais Saied, as well as his justice minister, his interior minister, and his defense minister, as well as all of his accomplices that are implicated in human rights violations.”

Ghannouchi, who is 81 years old, has been incarcerated ever since he made the statement on April 17 that Tunisia would be in danger of a “civil war” if left-wing parties or political Islamist parties like Ennahdha were abolished. “There is a will to construct terror and a police state, but Tunisians are not embracing that, and that is why my father, our fathers, and other political leaders and members of civil society are imprisoned because they are not accepting this coup and the return of dictatorship. According to Yusra Ghannouch, “They are not silent, and we will not be silent either.”

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The international community as well as rights organizations have condemned the authorities’ decision to imprison more than twenty political opponents as well as other people since the beginning of February. There have been allegations that the detainees were subjected to torture, and a number of the affected parties have reported harassment from the attorneys who are defending the victims.

“The attorneys who represent the detainees themselves have been threatened and charged with crimes.” Some of the inmates have been subjected to extremely inhumane treatment up until this point, as was previously mentioned. “In the case of one, an allegation of torture will also be raised at the African court,” said Rodney Dixon, a lawyer for the families of Tunisian opposition activists who have been jailed, taking care of his clients.

In his statement after the arrests, President Saied referred to those detained as “terrorists” and asserted that they were involved in a “conspiracy against state security. “In order to usher in the period of hyper-presidentialism in his country, Saied first had to dismantle the semi-parliamentary Constitution of 2014, which had built the institutional architecture that was in existence at the time.