Tunisia’s military court has sentenced four Members of Parliament to prison for attacking police officers last year.
Saif Eddine Maklouf, the leader of the dissolved parliament’s Karama Party, is among those jailed.
He was a vocal opponent of President Kais Saied and was sentenced to five months in prison, along with three other members of his party.
The military court issued 5-month prison sentences for Makhlouf and Nidhal Saoudi and 3-month terms to Mohamed Affas and Meher Zid, their lawyer Anaour Awled Ali told Reuters.
Rached Ghannouchi, the leader of the Ennahda party and speaker of the dissolved parliament, said “the trials are a consolidation of dictatorship”.
“The coup authority continues the method of mass trials in order to strike and besiege different opinions,” he said.
Meanwhile, on Sunday, thousands of Tunisians marched to the streets in the capital, Tunis, to protest President Kais Saied’s political actions and rising food costs.
One of the protest organisers, a coordinator from the Citizens Against the Coup alliance, told the state TV that the country’s “new constitution” was “written up unilaterally” by Saied.
Protests will continue in the form of sit-ins, marches, and hunger strikes, according to Ali al-Arid of the Ennahda Movement.
Since suspending parliament last year, Saied has pushed through a series of steps that have expanded his authority and dismantled political institutions.
On July 25, 2021, Saied dismissed the prime minister, suspended parliament, and assumed all governing powers, a move described by Tunisian opposition parties as a coup.
He faces internal and external criticism that he uses the judiciary, including the military, against his opponents. He rejects this and says that he will not be a dictator.