Police close headquarters of main opposition coalition as fears mount party will be banned

Tunisian authorities have banned meetings at all offices of the opposition Ennahda Islamist party and police have closed the headquarters of the Salvation Front main opposition coalition.

Ennahda fears the move will pave the way for banning the party. It came a day after police detained the leader of Ennahda, Rached Ghannouchi, the most prominent critic of President Kais Saied and three senior officials, the party said.

Ennahdha party’s Rached Ghannouchi, 81, is at least the 20th person to be held in recent months in crackdown by Kais Saied

Rached Ghannouchi, the leader of the Ennahda political party and one of the main opponents of the Tunisian president, Kais Saied, has been arrested, the latest in a string of opposition figures held.

Ghannouchi, 81, whose party was the largest in parliament before Saied dissolved the chamber in July 2021, was arrested by police at his Tunis home and taken “to an unknown location”, the Islamist-inspired Ennahdha said in a statement.

Nizar Issaoui, 35, died in hospital after protest against ‘police state’ running country, says brother

A professional footballer in Tunisia has died after setting himself alight earlier this week in what he called a protest against the “police state” ruling the country, his brother said.

Nizar Issaoui, 35, suffered third-degree burns from his action in the village of Haffouz in the central region of Kairouan, his brother Ryad said.

Daughter of Said Ferjani, who lived in UK for more than 20 years, says he has been falsely imprisoned and asks MPs to intervene

Britain is being urged to help protect the last vestiges of the Arab spring by calling for the release of Said Ferjani, the leading Tunisian politician who has been thrown into prison as part of an effort to silence the critics of the country’s increasingly authoritarian president.

Ferjani, 68, lived in the UK in political exile for more than two decades before returning for Tunisia’s democratic awakening in 2011.

Jaouhar Ben M’barek is most prominent opposition figure to be rounded up in president’s campaign of detentions

Tunisian security forces have arrested Jaouhar Ben M’barek, the most prominent opposition figure to be rounded up in an escalating campaign of detentions targeting rivals of the president, Kais Saied.

“Jaouhar was arrested late last night and we haven’t seen the charges against him,” his sister Dalila Msaddek, a lawyer, told AFP on Friday.

Demonstrators on Saturday demanded Kais Saied step down as they marked the anniversary of 2011 revolution

Thousands of protesters in central Tunis have marched against the seizure of near total power by the Tunisian president, Kais Saied, demanding he step down as they marked the anniversary of a key date in the 2011 revolution that brought democracy.

The central Habib Bourguiba avenue, the traditional site for major demonstrations, was crowded with thousands of protesters waving Tunisian flags, amid chants of “the people demand the fall of the regime”.

Fall in votes follows President Kais Saied’s suspension of legislature and redrawing of country’s political map

Tunisia has been plunged into political uncertainty after it recorded the lowest electoral turnout in its recent history following President Kais Saied’s suspension of parliament and subsequent redrawing of the country’s political map.

Its main opposition alliance called on Saied to “leave immediately” as voters overwhelmingly snubbed the the legislative election in what officials at the country’s Instance Supérieure Indépendante pour les Élections (ISIE) said was a participation rate of 8.8%.

Opposition groups are boycotting vote that one prominent party leader describes as ‘a still-born farce’

Tunisians have gone to the polls to elect a new parliament, 11 years to the day since a vendor’s self-immolation sparked the fall of their ruling tyrant and triggered a wave of popular revolts across north Africa and the Middle East.

In the troubled decade since, other regional states that once cracked under the strain of popular revolts have been increasingly smothered by counterrevolutions that clawed back civic gains and political freedoms championed by their citizens.