Prosecution of Ghannouchi, Ennahda party members follows pattern of attacks on all of Tunisia's political opposition
عربی
(Washington D.C., April 17, 2025) — Tunisian authorities should immediately release Rached Ghannouchi, the 83-year-old former Speaker of Parliament and co-founder of the Ennahda Party, whom they have unjustly detained and imprisoned for the past two years, said DAWN today.
Since President Kais Saied's power grab, the Tunisian government has brought numerous politically-motivated prosecutions against Ghannouchi targeting him for his leadership role in the country and his criticism of the President's abuses.
"The Tunisian government's relentless, obsessive persecution of the country's most prominent leader on baseless, political charges is all you need to know about the feckless dictatorship of Kais Saied," said Sarah Leah Whitson, Executive Director of DAWN. "While the country sinks deeper into economic despair, Saied is still wasting the government's time and resources on settling scores against Tunisia's leaders for democracy, including the 83-year-old Ghannouchi."
Tunisian courts have convicted and sentenced Ghannouchi in three separate trials, each stemming from politically motivated charges brought in retaliation for Ghannouchi's role as a prominent democratic leader in the country.
On May 15, 2023, Tunisia's anti-terrorism court sentenced Ghannouchi, who has also experienced Parkinson's symptoms, to 12 months in prison for "supporting terrorism" and "inciting hatred," primarily to punish him for his comments at the funeral of a fellow Ennahda party member, Farhat Laabar, praising him as someone who "did not fear the powerful or tyrants [taghout]." Prosecutors claimed that "taghout" was a reference to police forces, and therefore slander. After Ghannouchi appealed the sentencing, the appellate court increased his sentence to 15 months.
In a second trial, on February 1, 2024, the criminal section specializing in corruption cases of the Court of First Instance of Tunis sentenced Ghannouchi to three years in prison for allegedly receiving foreign financing for his party. These charges were based on allegations that the Ennahda party, which Ghannouchi formerly led, relied on foreign financing to bankroll its political campaigns in 2019. Known as the "lobbying case," the court also ordered Ghannouchi to pay TND 3,642,361 ($1.17 million) fine on behalf of his party. The Ennahda party denied the allegations and their lawyers stated that they did not have an opportunity to present their defense, review their case files, or access confiscated information from Ennahda's offices to support their case.
Most recently, on February 5, 2025, the Second Criminal Chamber of the Court of First Instance of Tunis sentenced Ghannouchi in a third case brought against him and dozens of defendants in an alleged conspiracy plot involving Instalingo, a media and public relations company, known popularly in Tunisia as the "Instalingo Case." The prosecutor presented evidence with little credibility of any Ghannouchi ties to the company, and no evidence that the defendants committed any of the crimes with which they were charged. On February 5, the defendants faced punishments ranging from five to 54 years in prison based on vague, undefined violations, including primarily of "conspiring against state security," "changing the structure of the state" and "offense against the President of the Republic," under Articles 61, 61 bis and 67 of the Criminal Code. The court sentenced Ghannouchi to 22 years in prison, a TND 80,000 ($25,000) fine, and a 10-year ban from holding public office. It also sentenced Ghannouchi's son-in-law, former Minister of Foreign Affairs Rafik Abdessalem, to 34 years and former Tunisian Prime Minister Hichem Mechichi, to 35 years in absentia. The Ennahda party denied having any dealings with the company.
"Ghannouchi's commitment to democracy and his vocal opposition to the monopolization of power is an example that should be championed, not repressed and punished," said Whitson. "The courage of Tunisia's opposition activists to oppose the return of one-man rule in the face of systematic repression shows that the struggle for human rights in the country is ongoing, despite the odds."
Arbitrary Arrest and Judicial Misconduct in the Instalingo Case
Tunisian police first arrested Ghannouchi on April 17, 2023, with nearly 100 policemen raiding his family home during Ramadan. Ghannouchi's daughter, Yusra Ghannouchi, whom DAWN interviewed on April 2, 2025 and April 16, 2025 recounted the moment when armed policemen arrested him, then forcibly disappeared him to an unknown location, denied him access to a lawyer, and subjected him to a lengthy and degrading interrogation. While Tunisia's national news agency reported that authorities detained Ghannouchi with an arrest warrant from counterterrorism prosecutors, Yusra said that the arrest and raid were unnecessary, as authorities could have delivered a summons to Ghannouchi, as they had done for past interrogations, rather than subject him to an invasive arrest. Prior to this arrest and in the preceding 20 months following Saied's coup, Tunisian officers subjected Ghannouchi to over 120 hours of interrogation. On April 18, 2023, Tunisian police also raided the headquarters of the Ennahda party, claiming it was pursuant to a search warrant but effectively shuttering the party's offices without a court decision, according to Yusra. Two days following the arrest, Yusra says authorities issued a "prison order" to keep her father imprisoned pending trial. Ghannouchi remains imprisoned at Mornaguia prison in Tunis.
The Instalingo trial was riddled with due process abuses and a lack of evidence. In a case originally filed against the company in 2021, the prosecutors alleged that Instalingo ran social media accounts critical of President Saeid, which they described as the criminal offences of "conspiring against state security," "changing the structure of the state" and "offense against the President of the Republic." They then expanded the case, seeking to blame dozens of defendants as conspirators involved in Instalingo's criticism. During an interrogation session, Ghannouchi denied any knowledge of the company and stressed that Ennahda has its own media office. A record of the interrogation also indicates that interrogators asked Ghannouchi only about his alleged relationship with Instalingo, rather than addressing the substance of the alleged violations of "conspiring against state security," "changing the structure of the state" and "offense against the President of the Republic."
Court records obtained by DAWN also show that Tunisian prosecutors offered Ghannouchi's role as head of the Ennahda party as the only evidence for his alleged association with Instalingo and the crimes with which they charged him, arguing that "the suspect enjoys the position of head of the Ennahda Movement Party […] including knowledge of every big and small detail and of its organizational bodies and nominal lists." Prosecutors bizarrely argued that Ennahda was linked to Instalingo because another media company, Al Mostakbil, allegedly provided services to Instalingo and had in the past hired one of Ghannouchi's daughters (name withheld for privacy) as a content creator on other, unspecified projects. In any event, even if defendants themselves, like Ghannouchi, had ties to Instalingo, they would be immaterial as proof of the crimes for which they were sentenced.
Prosecutors also presented pictures from Ghannouchi's phone of him and Adel Al-Daadaa, another defendant in the case, with Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan as evidence that Ghannouchi violated foreign financing laws. Prosecutors did not, however, provide any evidence to substantiate how the photographs supported such a claim. Lastly, prosecutors presented testimony from two individuals who claimed that the owners of Instalingo were working against Tunisian state interests, are connected to Turkey and Qatar, and affiliated with Ennahda but presented no evidence to support their claims. The defense challenged their credibility and noted inconsistencies in their testimonies, noting that one of the witnesses had previously been convicted of providing false testimony and a second, a former security agency staff member had close ties to Saied's family.
Ghannouchi's lawyers said that Tunisian authorities prevented them from presenting evidence to support their defense at trial, in a statement after the February 5 sentencing. Kawther Yazidi, the judge in the case according to a lawyer on Ghannouchi's defense team, had previously convicted another leader of the Ennahdha party, lawyer and former Minister of Justice Noureddine Bhiri, to 10 years in prison; DAWN documented Bhiri's unjust prosecution in a previous report.
Tunisian authorities transferred the case from one court to another just weeks before the verdict without justification, in an apparent bid to interfere in the judicial process and ensure a predetermined guilty verdict against Ghannouchi. DAWN obtained documents from Ghannouchi's defense team that chronologically list the dismissals and replacement of six presiding judges and public prosecutors originally assigned to the case in an apparent bid to venue and judge shop and following the mass expulsion of judges and prosecutors by President Saied. The government even changed the court location from Sousse to Tunis with no justification.
Ghannouchi's prosecution reflects the ongoing and systematic erosion of judicial independence and the rule of law in Tunisia following Saied's self-coup in July 2021. This includes: the arbitrary dismissal of judges without prior notice or any due process for resisting executive interference; a refusal by the Ministry of Justice to reinstate dismissed judges despite court rulings ordering them to do so; the dissolution of the supreme judicial council—the constitutional body responsible for overseeing judicial independence—and its replacement with judicial council appointed by the President; the issuing of executive Decree-Law 2022-35 allowing the President to summarily dismiss judges and prosecutors; and the subjection of judges and prosecutors to pressure and prosecutions by higher political authorities, including the prosecution of the President of the Association of Tunisian Judges for expressing support for dismissed judges and prosecutors.
The National Salvation Front, a coalition of the opposition political parties, condemned the verdict against Ghannouchi, calling it a "sham trial that lacked the minimum standards of fairness." Ennahda also issued a statement calling the trial a blatant violation of the independence of the judiciary and expressed concern with the attack on basic rights and freedoms associated with Ghannochi's detention.
The Misuse of Counterterrorism Laws Against Political Opposition
Tunisian prosecutors have pursued a series of cases aimed at repressing members of opposition groups and individuals speaking out against President Saied's administration, including Ghannouchi. Prosecutors have especially relied on the following two sets of charges in their politically motivated prosecution against Ghannouchi, and others:
The first involves vaguely-worded, criminal charges of conspiracy against state security, attempting to change the political regime and causing offense to the President of the Republic, under Articles 61, 61 bis and 67 of the Tunisian Criminal Code. Article 61 allows the state to prosecute an individual for any actions that "undermine the external security of the Tunisian state." Article 61 bis criminalizes "anyone who has undertaken, by any means whatsoever, to undermine the integrity of the Tunisian territory or has met agents of a foreign power, the purpose or the result of which is to undermine the military or diplomatic situation of Tunisia." Tunisian courts have also used this provision to prosecute opposition figures for simply meeting with diplomats, foreign journalists and even foreign researchers. Article 67 criminalizes any act that is "deemed to cause offense to the President" of Tunisia, a clear infringement on free speech and expression protections enshrined in Tunisia's constitution and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
The second set of charges Tunisian authorities employ widely against government critics, including Ghannouchi, relate to the 2015 Counterterrorism Law and particularly Articles 92, 93 and 94. The government has also deployed the specialized counter-terrorism brigade and court, which the U.S., the European Union and other foreign partners have supported and funded, against a wide sector of civil society, including journalists, judges, bureaucrats, businessmen and activists. The U.S. has declared a long-standing commitment to "bolster Tunisia's capacity to counter internal and regional threats and terrorism," while providing training and equipment to Tunisian military units in an effort that the U.S. embassy in Tunisia claims is to "improve capabilities in surveillance, mobility, and border security." From 2016 to 2021, Congress authorized a minimum amount of aid for Tunisia—$241 million in 2021. In 2023, the State Department, which manages the Foreign Military Financing Program, also supplied over $75 million in assistance to Tunisia. In 2023, the State Department's American Nonproliferation, Antiterrorism, Demining, & Related Programs also provided $2.5 million in funding for the Tunisian National Police and the National Guard counterterrorism unit. In January 2025, President Trump announced a halt on all U.S. aid to foreign countries, with the exception of Israel and Egypt, so continued funding to Tunisia remains unclear.
"President Saied's crackdown on Tunisian voices for democratic values, like Ghannouchi's, is part of a broader pattern in which the executive branch deploys counterterrorism laws as a pretext to stifle popular opposition," said Rameen Javadian, Advocacy and Research Associate at DAWN. "Despite a lack of evidence and extensive judicial misconduct in this case and others, outspoken Tunisian intellectuals and activists have borne the brunt of U.S.-funded and supported 'anti-terrorism' campaigns."
Ghannouchi is recognized as a vocal leader against authoritarianism in Tunisia. Well before 2011 even, Ghannouchi was active in movement building for democratic institutions in the country. Following the Arab uprisings, Ghannouchi played a key role in Tunisia's democratic transition and brokered an agreement to secure a progressive constitution that enshrined human rights and the rule of law. In 2011, Foreign Policy listed Ghannouchi as one of the Top 100 Global Thinkers, and in 2012, Chatham House awarded its annual prize to Ghannouchi for his success in coalition building for democratic transitions. In 2014, the Ibn Rushd Prize was awarded to Ghannouchi for his extensive political activity advocating for the establishment of a modern democratic Arab state.
