According to the party and the wife of a detainee, three leaders of the formerly dominant Ennahdha party in Tunisia are fasting to protest their incarceration as part of a campaign against the president’s critics.
One of them, 64-year-old Sahbi Atig, a former head of Ennahdha’s parliamentary caucus, has been on a hunger strike for 32 days, which has caused a serious decline in his health, according to his wife Zeineb Mraihi, who recently paid him a visit in jail.
“He lost 17 kilograms (37 pounds), his heart rhythm is weak and he can hardly speak,” Mraihi said.
Last week, she said, Atig spent several days in the hospital’s intensive care unit. Before Saied dissolved the legislature in July 2021, the Ennahdha party, which has Islamist roots, was the largest in the legislature.
The action was a part of a power grab that allowed him to impose himself as the sole democratic government to emerge from the Arab Spring revolutions in the area more than ten years ago.
A Tunisian court last month handed Ennahdha leader Rached Ghannouchi a one-year prison sentence on terrorism-related charges, which the party condemned as an “unjust political verdict.”
More than 20 Saied’s political rivals and figures, including ex-ministers and business leaders, have been detained since February, including Ghannouchi and Atig.
Since the beginning of May, Atig has been detained on suspicion of money laundering.
Another Ennahdha leader, former parliamentarian Ahmed Mechergui, 54, reportedly started a hunger strike on Sunday to protest his detention since April 18.
Youssef Nouri, a prominent party member who was also detained around the same time, has been fasting since April 25 in order to “protest the conditions of his detention and the non-respect of his fundamental rights,” according to the party.
In March the European Parliament, in a non-binding resolution, decried the “authoritarian drift” of Saied, who says those detained were “terrorists” involved in a “conspiracy against state security”.
