Get all your news in one place.
100’s of premium titles.
One app.
Start reading
Asharq Al-Awsat
Asharq Al-Awsat
World
Asharq Al-Awsat

Tunisia’s Ennahda Party Says Its Senior Official Bhairi Released from House Arrest

FILE: People stand outside a closed court during a nationwide strike in Tunis, Tunisia (Reuters)

Tunisia's moderate Islamist Ennahda party said on Facebook that its senior official, Noureddine Bhairi, was freed from house arrest early on Tuesday.

The Tunisian Interior Ministry had lifted the house arrest order against Bhairi, the state news agency (TAP) reported late on Monday.

Bhairi was placed under house arrest due to illegal submission of passports and nationality documents and a serious suspicion of terrorism, according to the interior minister, according to Reuters.

Bhairi, who was detained in December, was the party’s first senior official to be detained since President Kais Saied dismissed Parliament and seized governing powers in July in a move that Ennahda and some other parties have called a coup.

Since Saied's July intervention, several senior politicians and business leaders have been detained or subjected to legal prosecution, often involving cases of corruption or defamation.

Rights groups have criticized some of those arrests and the use of military courts to hear such cases.

However, there has been no widespread campaign of arrests of critics of Saied or other dissidents and the state news agency has continued to report news that is unfavorable to the government.

Sign up to read this article
Read news from 100’s of titles, curated specifically for you.
Already a member? Sign in here
Related Stories
Top stories on inkl right now
Our Picks
Fourteen days free
Download the app
One app. One membership.
100+ trusted global sources.