Tunisian activists protested on Tuesday near a Tunis court where prominent figures face charges of conspiring against state security.

The opposition said the allegation was fabricated and a symbol of President Kais Saied’s authoritarian rule.

Rights groups said the trial highlights Saied’s full control over the judiciary since he dissolved the elected parliament in 2021 and began ruling by decree before later dissolving the independent Supreme Judicial Council.

Forty people, including high-profile politicians, businessmen and journalists, are being prosecuted in the case. More than 20 have fled abroad.

Some politicians were also arrested in 2023 in a crackdown on opposition ranks, including Ghazi Chaouachi, Issam Chebbi, Jawahar Ben Mbrak, Abdelhamid Jlassi and Khyam Turki.

The former presidential chief of staff, Nadia Akacha, and former head of intelligence Kamel Guizani, are among the accused. They live abroad.

“We are facing the biggest judicial scandals. It is one of the darkest injustices in Tunisia’s history,’’ the head of the Tunisian Human Rights League, Bassam Trifi, said.

Mr Saied said in 2023 these politicians were “traitors and terrorists’’ and that the judges who acquitted them were their accomplices.

The opposition leaders arrested in the case accuse Saied of staging a coup in 2021 and say the case is fabricated to stifle the opposition and establish a one-man, repressive rule.

They said they were preparing an initiative aimed at uniting the fragmented opposition to face the democratic setback in the cradle of the Arab Spring uprisings.

A senior official in the Salvation Front, the main opposition coalition, Chaima Issa, is among eight people appearing before the judge while they are free in the trial’s first session.

“This trial is unjust and a disgrace to the authorities. It is a purely political case that has included all political leaders,’’ Issa told Reuters before the hearing.

“We charge that we oppose the regime. I will continue the struggle at any cost,’’ she added.

Most political parties leaders in Tunisia are in prison including Abir Moussi, leader of the Free Constitutional Party, and Rached Ghannouchi, the head of Ennahda party, two of Saied’s most prominent opponents, who remain in prison since 2023 in other cases.

The government said there is democracy in Tunisia and Saied maintains he will not be a dictator, but he said that no one is above the law and what he calls a corrupt elite must be held accountable. 

(Reuters/NAN)