Tunisian police detain lawmaker, Islamist party officials

TUNIS – Tunisian authorities jailed an absorption lawmaker Friday and concisely detained 4 members of the almighty Islamist question Ennahdha successful the aftermath of the president's determination to prehend exceptional powers, according to Tunisian media reports.

The Ennahdha members were brought earlier investigating magistrates and accused of trying to incite unit extracurricular the parliament gathering aft President Kais Saied's announcement Sunday, according to enactment authoritative Riadh Chaidi.

The 4 were questioned but aboriginal released for deficiency of impervious of violence, Chaidi told The Associated Press.

The president suspended parliament, lifted the immunity of parliament members, fired the premier curate and took power of the enforcement branch. He said the determination was indispensable to prevention the state amid nationalist choler astatine the authorities implicit joblessness, rising prices and 1 of Africa’s worst coronavirus outbreaks.

But Saied’s determination raised concerns astir Tunisia’s young democracy. Critics — astir notably Ennahdha — accused him of a coup. Ennahdha has been a large subordinate successful Tunisian legislative elections since the country’s 2011 revolution, which unleashed the Arab Spring uprisings crossed the region.

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The adjacent day, Ennahdha supporters skirmished with backers of the president extracurricular parliament, but the assemblage was yet dispersed by police.

Among those detained Friday were the bodyguard of Ennahdha person and parliament talker Rachid Ghannouchi, his protocol serviceman and a subordinate of the party’s advisory council.

The 4 were accused of inciting radical from a working-class vicinity adjacent to parliament to bring sticks to transportation retired acts of unit during the rally, according to the authoritative TAP quality agency.

“There was nary nexus with violence,” said Chaidi, a subordinate of the party's enforcement bureau. “Violence is not a prime of Ennahdha.”

He sought to minimize the detentions, and played down concerns that they were a motion of a authorities crackdown singling retired his party.

U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan spoke Saturday with Tunisia's president and conveyed President Joe Biden’s beardown enactment for the radical of Tunisia and for Tunisian democracy, National Security Council spokesperson Emily Horne said successful a White House property release.

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“In this spirit, the telephone focused connected the captious request for Tunisian leaders to outline a swift instrumentality to Tunisia’s antiauthoritarian path,” the property merchandise said. “National Security Advisor Sullivan underscored that this volition necessitate rapidly forming a caller government, led by a susceptible premier curate to stabilize Tunisia’s system and face the COVID-19 pandemic, arsenic good arsenic ensuring the timely instrumentality of the elected parliament.”

Also Friday, outspoken legislator Yassine Ayari was arrested extracurricular his home, according to a Facebook station by his party, the Hope and Action Movement.

His lawyer Mokhtar Jemai said Ayari was seemingly arrested successful transportation with a June 30 tribunal conviction, but was not informed of the crushed for conviction. Ayari has spoken retired against the subject and the authorities and faced ineligible problems successful the past, but nary longer enjoys parliamentary immunity due to the fact that of the president's decisions.

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On Thursday, the president named a caller interior minister, his archetypal large assignment since the shakeup. Ridha Gharsallaoui, a erstwhile nationalist information advisor to the presidency, volition present caput the Interior Ministry, which oversees home security, including policing.

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