A court in Tunisia has given former President Moncef Marzouki an eight-year prison sentence, even though he was not present in court. He was accused of attacking the state security and encouraging people in Tunisia to fight against each other, a court official said.
Marzouki, who lives in Paris, has been sent to prison for the second time. He was given a four-year sentence in 2021 when he was in absentia.
Mohamed Zitouna, who speaks for the Tunisian court, said Marzouki was found guilty because of things he said in a speech in Paris that caused trouble, but he didn’t give more information about it.
Marzouki was the president from 2011 to 2014. He strongly opposes President Kais Saied.
In 2021, Saied shut down Parliament, fired the government, and started making decisions on his own. Some people, like Marzouki and other leaders of the opposing group, called it a coup.
The president of Tunisia said that he didn’t do anything wrong when he increased his power in 2022. He claimed it was necessary to stop the country from being chaotic for many years.
Many leaders of opposition groups were taken by the police in the past year. This includes Rached Ghannouchi, who leads the Islamist Ennahda party, and Abir Moussi, the leader of Free Constitutional.
Last year, government arrested several well-known opposition leaders for allegedly planning to harm the country’s safety.
The opposition says that Saied is silencing the media and being a strict ruler. They also think that his changes to the constitution have damaged the democracy that was created after the 2011 revolution.
Saied said that the accusations against him are not true. He has called his critics bad names like criminals, traitors and terrorists. He also warned that any judge who lets his critics go free will be considered helping them.