Tunisia: Tunisian opposition leader with Spanish passport challenges Said regime after one year in prison without trial | International

A Tunisian opposition leader, Social Democrat Jayam Turki, has been on hunger strike in prison since last week along with other leaders detained a year ago in the biggest wave of political repression under the regime of President Kais Said, who closed Parliament in 2021 and has ruled with autocratic prejudices ever since. Turki, 58, is the son of the writer Elodia Zaragoza, born in Valencia in 1939 and exiled to Tunisia after the civil war together with her family of republican militants. He has a Spanish passport and received Spanish consular assistance in prison.

Elodia Zaragoza, who after her death in 2020 in the middle of the pandemic gave her name to a Spanish-Tunisian association, was born in a prison where her mother, the anarchist militant Amelia Jover, was awaiting the execution of her sentence to death, after having been sentenced to death. she was tried by a military court in a summary trial without guarantees, for her militancy in the Libertarian Youth of the CNT union. Her father, a sailor loyal to the Republic, had fled at the end of the war aboard a submarine in the Tunisian port of Bizerte. Mother and daughter managed to escape from prison and left Spain. After escaping a concentration camp in southern France, near the Spanish border, the family was finally reunited in Tunisia, where some 4,000 republican refugees had settled.

Jayam Turki, married with three children, was a leader of the social democratic Ettakatol party and his name appeared as a candidate for prime minister in a coalition of Islamists and secular and centre-left liberals before the dissolution of Parliament, which Said consummated in 2022. From A year ago, anti-terrorism legislation was applied to him without any legal proceedings against him having yet been finalized.

For about 15 minutes a week, his family visits him in a prison located an hour’s drive from the Tunisian capital. Their conditions of detention are similar to those of ordinary prisoners, according to legal sources. “In a year he appeared only once before the investigating judge who was handling his case. Extensions of detention have been systematic during this period,” he adds. “The food always arrives cold in his cell, where he has no means of heating it.” Since last October he has received assistance from the Spanish Consulate in Tunisia on at least three occasions as a Spanish citizen.

The sources consulted believe that his morale is high after a year behind bars, despite suffering from capsulitis which causes pain in both shoulders. For two months he has been waiting to be visited in hospital, after having passed through the prison infirmary. He is only allowed to go out into the so-called dangerous prisoners’ courtyard, which is about 15 square meters, without being able to access the main courtyard like the rest of the inmates.

The meetings that Turki organized in Tunisia between opposition representatives and Western diplomats were viewed with suspicion by those in power, who now accuse him of “conspiracy with foreign forces”. His incarceration pending trial, along with other opposition leaders, is interpreted by his supporters as a preventive measure ahead of presidential elections due this year, in which Said aspires to consolidate power without being challenged at the polls by rivals from entity. Turki is considered a consensus figure in the opposition and a bridge between the different political currents of the National Salvation Front alliance, which seeks a way out of the political and economic crisis that has hit Tunisia in recent years.

The Elodia Zaragoza Jover Turki Group, committed to recovering the memory of the Spanish republican exiles who arrived in Tunisia after the Civil War, has expressed its concern for the fate of the social democratic leader who has been in prison for a year. This association, of which Turki is an honorary member, has asked the Tunisian government for maximum respect for human rights and has asked the Spanish authorities to be vigilant against a possible case of arbitrary detention.

Of the Spanish-Tunisian association, which offers scholarships to study in Spain and takes care of the cemetery of republicans who died in Tunisia, one of its members, Professor Bernabé López, believes that “the dimension of his case is excessive: he meets with the diplomats and becomes a traitor to his homeland.” “The Spanish government has not contacted our association, it is an inconvenient issue that reveals the obstinacy of President Said,” says the honorary professor of Arab and Islamic Studies at the Autonomous University of Madrid and expert on the Maghreb. “In Tunisia there was a return to the times of Ben Ali (dictator Zine el Abidine). The freedom that was breathed after the 2011 revolution, I fear, has gone back”, concludes Bernabé López, who until recently lived in Tunisia.

President Said appears to have cracked down on dissent to consolidate his autocratic mandate after Parliament closes in 2021. The president, a jurist with no political experience until his election in 2019, aspires to revalidate his mandate at the polls this year in the absence of a coherent alternative from the opposition while continuing to govern by decree. Dozens of dissident leaders from Said’s regime have been jailed since February last year on the main charge of “attacking state security”.

Among them, in addition to Turki, is Rachid Ganuchi, 82 years old, former speaker of Parliament and leader of the Islamist Ennahda movement, the largest party in the Chamber until its closure. Imprisoned since April 2023, the leader of the largest opposition formation on Monday joined the hunger strike that half a dozen jailed leaders had started the previous week.

The Committee for the Defense of Detained Political Leaders, which is part of the legal team, describes the arrest of opponents in the framework of an alleged plot against the state as a “political case aimed at silencing the opposition” through fictitious evidence and through “a justice devoid of independence”. The accusations of “treason” and “conspiracy with foreign forces”, in the face of what constitutes a peaceful and legitimate political opposition, have also generated a climate of intimidation for freedom of expression and political opinion which leads to the detention of journalists . The Committee questions above all the absence of guarantees in a “trial with multiple accusations with sentences that can reach the death penalty”, in compliance with anti-terrorism legislation and the Criminal Code, “which recall the accusations presented [contra los disidentes] under the dictatorship of Ben Ali (1987-2011).”

Organization of a terrorist plot, preparation of attacks, acquisition of ammunition and explosives, attempted murder, diversion and laundering of funds, insult to the head of state and even attack against food safety, disrupting markets by hoarding products to promote their Price increases are some of the 17 accusations made against Tunisian opponents. They involve fifty people. The defense lawyers assure that they have not yet seen conclusive and conflicting evidence in the report, but only some anonymous accusations.

“The Tunisian authorities have embarked on a witch hunt by abusing the justice system to repress the right to freedom of expression and political dissent,” warned Heba Morayef, Amnesty International’s North Africa director. “The maintenance of arbitrary detention of political prisoners,” she adds, “constitutes a travesty of justice.”

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