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Tunisian Interior Minister Tawfiq Sharaf El-Din said, on Monday, that placing Noureddine El-Beheiry, Vice-President of the Ennahda Movement under house arrest, was caused by “issuing passports to people in an illegal manner and a serious suspicion of terrorism,” after El-Buhairi’s defense said it considered him in a case of kidnapping and filed a complaint. Against the country’s President Kais Saied and the Minister of the Interior.
The Tunisian Minister of Interior added in a press conference that the house arrest decision that was taken against Al-Buhairi, 63, was based on legal grounds and based on suspicions related to terrorism, and said that accordingly a decision was taken to place two people under house arrest on December 30 last. .
The Tunisian authorities had arrested last Friday, Noureddine Beheiri, who previously held the position of Minister of Justice between 2011 and 2013, and the Ministry of the Interior attributed this procedure to reasons that it said were related to the protection of security and public order, in accordance with the emergency provisions in force in the country since 2015.
Handing over passports
In response to criticism of the house arrest decision against the leader of the Ennahda movement, Minister Sharaf El-Din said that “the decision was not absurd, but was based on a legal text, and behind it was a suspicion of terrorism,” and that “suspicions were based on research,” including the granting of two passports at the Tunisian embassy. In Vienna, other than legal formulas, official papers were granted to a beneficiary of Syrian parents, who had no assets in Tunisia.
Also under house arrest is the security official, Fathi Al-Baladi, who in 2011 worked as an advisor to the former Minister of the Interior, Ali Al-Arayedh, and is also a leader in the Ennahda movement.
Hours before the Tunisian Minister of the Interior’s conference, the defense team of Noureddine Al-Buhairi said, in a press conference on Monday, that it did not know his legal status and considered him in a case of “kidnapping”, while a human rights delegation said that it had visited Al-Buhairi in the hospital and that he had started a hunger strike.
The defense committee warned that the situation of freedoms and rights in the country was in “real danger”.
Defense member Samir Dilo said that they use “kidnapping” to describe the case legally, because Al-Buhairi was kidnapped in the street by elements who did not disclose their identities, did not provide legal support, and without a complaint or case against the Tunisian leader, a member of the frozen parliament.
political issue
Dilo stressed that the Al-Buhairi case is not a human rights issue, but rather a political one in which “the judiciary is employed.”
He explained that the authority knows the whereabouts of Al-Buhairi at the present time, and that he is in the intensive care unit at the Habib Hospital in Bougatfa in the city of Bizerte, but it considers him legally in an unknown location, because it does not know where he was detained before he was transferred to the hospital and where he will be detained after that.
And the defense of Al-Buhairi – who was arrested for the fourth consecutive day – announced that it had submitted a complaint about his kidnapping against Tunisian President Kais Saied and the Minister of Interior. The authority indicated that the decision of the Ministry of Interior to place Al-Buhairi under house arrest was issued after his kidnapping.
And the Ennahda movement said last Friday that elements in civilian clothes had kidnapped Al-Buhairi in front of his house and taken him to an unknown destination after his wife, lawyer Saeeda Al-Akrimi, who was accompanying him, had been violently abused.
Visit to Buhairi
In the same context, the head of the Tunisian National Authority for the Prevention of Torture, Fathi Al-Jari, said that a human rights delegation was able to visit the deputy head of the Ennahda movement in the hospital, stressing that he is on a hunger strike, but his health is stable.
A number of lawyers continue their sit-in to protest what they described as the kidnapping and illegal detention of El-Beheiry.
It is noteworthy that Al-Buhairi is the first senior official in the Ennahda movement to be detained by security since President Kais Saied dissolved parliament and took control of government authorities in late July, in a move described by Ennahda and other parties as a “coup.”
Since last July 25, Tunisia has been witnessing a political crisis against the backdrop of exceptional measures, most notably the freezing of parliament’s competencies, the lifting of the immunity of its deputies, the abolition of the constitutionality monitoring body, the issuance of legislation by presidential decrees, the dismissal of the prime minister, and the appointment of a new head of government.
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