Tunisia sentences ex-President Marzouki to 22 years in absentia
TUNIS, June 20 (Reuters) - A Tunisian court on Friday handed down a 22‑year prison sentence in absentia to former President Moncef Marzouki, a fierce critic of President Kais Saied, on charges of undermining state security, raising the opposition's fears of an escalating crackdown against critics.
Marzouki, who was president from 2011 to 2014, accuses Saied of establishing an authoritarian regime after dismissing parliament and ruling by decree since he seized almost all powers in 2011.
Saied defends his actions as necessary steps to stabilise Tunisia.
This is the third ruling against Marzouki, after a court ruled last year to imprison him for eight years and four years before that in various other cases.
Commenting on the ruling, Marzouki said from his exile in Paris: "I say to these judges: your rulings are invalid, and you are invalid ... you will be tried soon".
"Democracy will return", he added.
Earlier on Friday, another court sentenced Sahbi Atig, a senior official in Ennahda, the country's main opposition party, to 15 years in prison on charges of money laundering, his lawyer said.
The 15-year sentence was shorter than some sentences handed down recently. In April, a court sentenced a string of opposition leaders, businessmen and lawyers to prison terms of up to 66 years, on conspiracy charges.
Most of the leaders of political parties in Tunisia are in prison, including Abir Moussi, leader of the Free Constitutional Party, and Rached Ghannouchi, the head of Ennahda - two of Saied's most prominent opponents.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
5 hours ago
- The Guardian
Coalition happy to have quotas for Nationals on frontbench but not for female Liberal MPs, Tanya Plibersek says
The Labor frontbencher Tanya Plibersek has rubbished Liberal party objections to quotas to boost female representation in frontline politics, while dismissing claims longstanding Labor rules subvert democracy. As a series of reviews into the Coalition's emphatic 3 May election loss get under way, the shadow defence minister, Angus Taylor, has opposed a push for changes to preselection rules to promote Liberal women into winnable seats. Taylor, a leader in the conservative wing of the party's New South Wales branch, said gender quotas 'subvert democratic processes' and that mentoring, recruitment and support of women were better strategies to achieve increased female representation. Plibersek told ABC TV the justification was wrong, noting Labor had passed gender parity using quotas, while the female MPs made up less than a third of Liberal parliamentary ranks. 'They've got a quota of National party MPs that have to be on the frontbench,' she said. 'So they're happy to have quotas for National party MPs. It's just quotas for women that they're not prepared to use. Sign up for Guardian Australia's breaking news email 'Does Angus Taylor really want people to believe that the 28 most talented Liberals in the whole country are the people who've made it into the federal parliament?' Plibersek noted that the Liberals had ignored a non-binding 50% target for female representation put in place after the 2022 election. Labor introduced binding gender quotas in 1994 and has used the intervening decades to toughen its rules. The opposition leader, Sussan Ley, last week used a speech to the National Press Club to pledge to recruit more women to the Liberal party, saying she would be a 'zealot' for that objective. But Ley, the first woman to lead the Liberals, said she was personally agnostic about whether quotas were needed, insisting management of preselection processes was the responsibility of state divisions. 'Our party must preselect more women in winnable seats so that we see more Liberal women in federal parliament,' she said. 'Current approaches have clearly not worked, so I am open to any approach that will.' On Sunday Taylor said he and Ley agreed the Liberal party needed more female MPs and female members. 'The key thing that we all absolutely agree on here is we have to mobilise a grassroots movement across our side of politics for the things we believe in,' he told Sky News. Sign up to Breaking News Australia Get the most important news as it breaks after newsletter promotion 'That means having people who are representative of their communities, representative of the community here in Australia and we need to find every possible way to do that.' Taylor called for a sensible debate about recruiting women to parliament and to the Liberal party's membership more broadly. 'I've never been a believer in quotas to achieve that but its clear we have to take proactive action to achieve that.' A formal review into the Coalition's loss is being led by the Howard government minister Nick Minchin and the former NSW state minister Pru Goward. The Queensland Liberal National party senator James McGrath is expected to run a separate review into the party's structure. The opposition frontbencher Julian Leeser has called for consideration of preselection primary contests instead of quotas, while high-profile Liberals including the former minister Simon Birmingham and the NSW senator Maria Kovacic have called for mandated quota systems to prevent another drubbing by Labor. The NSW Liberal Women's Council will debate gender quotas at a meeting in Sydney this week. The party has designated places in its federal council for the chair of the federal women's council, as well as other groups including the Young Liberals.
Daily Mail
5 hours ago
- Daily Mail
DAN HODGES: Keir Starmer's time as Prime Minister is over. This is everything I've heard about his U-turns, confusion and lack of leadership behind-the-scenes. Deep down, even he knows he's done
To be fair, Keir Starmer did better than Liz Truss. Her benighted premiership lasted 49 days. His has effectively ended after 11 months, almost six whole terms in Truss Years. But make no mistake, Starmer's premiership is indeed over. Yes, he'll stumble on, 'in office, but not in power' to borrow Norman Lamont's evergreen description of the steady, irreversible erosion of Prime Ministerial authority.
Daily Mail
5 hours ago
- Daily Mail
I've lost four limbs but STILL work three jobs every single day of the week. This is my message to all those languishing on disability benefits: CRAIG MACKINLAY
It's not unusual in politics to become a lightning rod for public disgruntlement, but rarely have I been greeted with such sustained and spittle-flecked abuse as that which turned my mobile red-hot on Friday. My ' crime ', as my abusers saw it, was to suggest in an article in the Daily Mail the self-evident truth that many disability benefit claimants would be better off in work.
