The arrest of the vice-president of the Tunisian Ennahdha Movement, Noureddine Bhiri
Tunisia’s Ennahdha Movement announced on Friday that security forces in civilian clothes arrested Noureddine Bhiri, vice president of the movement, as confirmed by former leader of the movement Samir Dilou.
The group spoke of what it described as an abduction and an unknown abduction, the same phrases used by Ennahdha when a member was arrested by security forces.
Ennahdha said that Bhiri’s wife, lawyer Saïda al-Akrami, had been “assaulted” by those who arrested her husband.
Bhiri is the first senior Ennahdha official detained by security forces since President Kais Saied dissolved parliament and took power after exceptional measures were taken on July 25.
Observers believe that Bhiri is the black box in Ennahdha due to his close proximity to its president Rached Ghannouchi. He is also accused by his opponents of being involved in controlling the judiciary during his tenure as Minister of Justice during the term of the troika in 2012.
He described the judiciary in a certain period as “the district of Bhiri”, where Judge Kulthoum Kanu Noureddine Bhiri accused him of being the worst person in the Ministry of Justice, pointing out that Bhiri intervened directly in the judiciary and appointed a number of judges affiliated with Ennahdha.
President Kais Saied issued a demand on July 25th to purge the judiciary of corrupt judges amid talk of dissolving the Supreme Judicial Council.
Sources have also said that Bhiri is among the architects of Ennahdha’s alliances, both with Nidaa Tounes after the 2014 elections and with the heart of Tunisia after the 2019 elections.
Bhiri’s arrest comes shortly after former President Moncef Marzouki was sentenced to 4 years in prison on charges related to assaulting state security; President Said denied any role in the sentence.
