Tunisia gives five years in prison to loud critics of the president

A court in Tunisia gave a well-known critic of President Kais Saied five years in prison on Friday. This is the latest move against an opposition leader who they say is using the courts to support what they call his authoritarian rule.

A court in Tunis that deals with anti-terrorism found Ahmed Souab guilty. He used to be an administrative judge. In April, he was arrested for saying bad things about the court system and saying that the judges worked “with a knife to their heads.”

Tunisian police said the comment was a threat, but Souab’s lawyers said it was about the political pressure the judiciary is under.

What did you do to deserve five years in prison? When someone said something without meaning to, but everyone else did, they understood it as a figure of speech. His lawyer, Sami Ben Ghazi, said, “Ahmed Souab is in jail instead of us.”

Three well-known NGOs said this week that the government had stopped their work because they were allegedly getting money from outside the country. They said this was an attempt to quiet the strong voice of civil society.

Opponents of Saied say that he has destroyed the independence of the judiciary since he took over a lot of power in 2021 by dissolving parliament and ruling by order.

In 2022, he got rid of the Supreme Judicial Council and fired dozens of judges. Opposition groups and human rights activists called these actions a coup.

Most leaders of the opposition are in jail on different charges. These include Abir Moussi, leader of the Free Constitutional Party, and Rached Ghannouchi, leader of the opposition party Ennahda.

He says he is ridding the country of what he calls traitors and corrupt people and that judges who find them not guilty are working with them. Saied rejects using the courts against his political opponents. He says he won’t rule out everyone.