Tunisia: 40 people sentenced to prison terms in a plot case

A Tunis court rendered its verdict as part of a trial brought to around forty personalities for a conspiracy. According to the Tunis Africa Press agency (TAP), these are politicians, businessmen and journalists who were sentenced to prison terms ranging from 13 to 66 years.

The anti -terrorist prosecutor’s office informed the defendant’s conviction agency prosecuted for “conspiracy against state security” and “membership of a terrorist group”. The court had ruled in the evening of April 18, during the third hearing of the plot case.

Among the condemned people are several opposition personalities, including Ghazi Chaouachi, ex-minister of equipment, housing and territorial development, and Issam Chebbi, member of the 2011 Tunisian Constituent Assembly.

Most of the people involved in the conspiracy had been arrested during the campaign that the Tunisian authorities had undertaken in 2023, then imprisoned for having trained a terrorist group aimed at overthrowing President Kaïs Saïed, as well as for corruption. According to the TAP, several of the convicted people are on the run abroad.

In recent years, Tunisian security forces have arrested a number of political activists, including several leaders of the Ennahdha Islamist Party. Last February, the party leader, Rached Ghannouchi, was sentenced to three years in prison for having received external funding. The opposition says that President Kaïs Saïed seeks to concentrate the most important levers of power in his hands.