Souab is a fierce critic or President Kais Saied and was arrested for comments on the Judiciary that acts under coercion.
A Tunisian judge ordered the arrest of the outstanding lawyer Ahmed Souab, a fierce critic of President Kais Saied, the lawyers said, two days after his judgment for comments on the Judiciary.
Souab’s trial caused a generalized anger between political parties and civil society groups, which said the measure was a dangerous escalation of an offensive against dissent and marked a new entrenchment of the country’s authoritarian regime.
The activists went to the streets in protest this week, asking for their release, blackmail slogans against Saied and demanding the end of harassment, silencing and imprisonment of critics.
Souab was in the legal defense team at the mass trial last week, in which the accused boxes, including Saied’s vocal critics, received terms of jail or up to 66 years.
The lawyer was arrested on Monday in a police in the police in the capital of Tunisia, after saying before the sentence of their clients that “the knives are not in the detatase neck, but in the neck or the judge they are all in the citricization.
An anti -terrorism court interpreted the comment as a threat to the judges, but Souab’s lawyers said it was a reference to the enormous political pressure on the judges.
Souab had been arrested for “charges related to terrorism” for the comment, said a court spokesman.
Souab is a retired judge and administrative lawyer, and a vocal critic of Saied, who has repeatedly said that the Judiciary had its independence.
His lawyers boycotted Wednesday’s hearing after the judge informed them that he had accepted the representation of only four lawyers from the boxes present to defend him.
Saeb Souab, the son of the lawyer arrested, told journalists that “according to a metaphor, my father is now suspended from terrorism.”
Addressing President Saied, his former Law Professor Saeb Souab said: “This is not the law that taught us.”
He asked for the release of his father, who said he suffers from heart problems.
‘Hurry Test’
Since Saied launched a power capture in the summer of 2021, the defenders of the rights and figures of the opposition have denounced a reversal of freedoms in the country in North Africa, where the Arab spring of 2011.
Critics have denounced mass trial as a politically motivated and without foundation. The defendant faced charges that include “conspiracy against state security” and “belonging to a terrorist group”, according to their lawyers.
Among the objectives are figures of what was one the greatest party, Ennahdha, such as the leader and former president or Parliament, Ghannouchi, former prime minister, Hichem Mechichi, former minister or judge Noureddine Bhiri, a Saidyani.
But the repression has also affected many figures that are not from Ennahdha, including Abir Moussi, a fierce critic of Ennahdha, and Abderrazek Krimi, director of the project of the Tunisian Refugee Council.
Some of them had arrested in February 2023, after which Saied described them “terrorists.”
“The Tunisian court did not grant the defendants as much as an appearance of just trial,” Bassam Khawaja, deputy director of the Middle East and director of North Africa in Human Rights Watch said.
Tunisia was “making it clear that anyone who participates in the political opposition or civic activism risks years in prison after a foggy trial without due process,” he added.
Several Tunisian legal scholars also denounced in a petition on Tuesday “flagrant violations of all the bases of a fair trial.”
