Jailed Rached Ghannouchi, the head of the opposition in Tunisia and a fierce opponent of President Kais Saied, has started a three-day hunger strike in support of other opposition leaders who are detained, his Islamist Ennahda party announced on Friday.
Ghannouchi, 82, was given a year in prison in May after being found guilty of inciting a riot and planning an attack on state security. This year, more than 20 additional opposition figures have been imprisoned.
They claim that Saied’s decision to dissolve the elected parliament in 2021 and his efforts to impose rule by decree amounted to a coup. Saied has denied his actions were a coup and claimed they were required to save Tunisia from years of anarchy. Saied established his new constitutional powers in a referendum with a low turnout last year.
According to a statement from the Ennahda party, the three-day action was started by the party’s leader to support other imprisoned opposition figures who are protesting their alleged wrongful detention.
This week, Jawher Ben Mbarak, a well-known opposition leader who has been imprisoned for more than seven months, started an ongoing hunger strike to protest his political incarceration.
Saied has referred to his detractors as criminals, traitors, and terrorists, and he has issued a warning that any court that releases them will be seen as aiding and abetting them.
Prior to the 2011 revolution that delivered democracy, Ghannouchi was a political prisoner and exile. As parliament speaker after the 2019 election, his party held the majority in the legislature until Saied ordered tanks to dissolve it in 2021.
According to his attorney, the accusations against him are related to a eulogy he delivered for a member of his Ennahda party last year in which he stated that the deceased “did not fear a ruler or tyrant, he only feared God.”