By Meriem Belhiba

 

TUNIS, 11 Dec. - (ANA) - Haifa Chebbi was at home when the police came for her father.

 

Ahmed Najib Chebbi, 81, had spent five decades in Tunisian politics—imprisoned under former Prime Minister Habib Bourguiba, exiled under former President Ben Ali, and presidential candidate after the 2011 revolution.

 

On Thursday morning, officers arrived to take him into custody, one week after an appeals court upheld his 12-year sentence on charges of conspiring against state security.

 

"We completed every legal step, but we are under no illusion," Haifa said. "My father's freedom depends on the country's freedom."

 

Her father was the third opposition figure detained in recent days. Ayachi Hammami, a human rights lawyer now on hunger strike, and activist Chaima Issa had already been taken to begin serving their own sentences. All three were convicted in the same sprawling case.

 

The case represents Tunisia's most extensive political prosecution since the 2011 revolution that ended decades of authoritarian rule. Roughly 40 defendants—opposition leaders, activists, lawyers, businesspeople—face sentences ranging from 10 to 45 years.

 

For the third time in two weeks, thousands have poured into central Tunis, the largest anti-government demonstrations since President Kais Saied seized expanded powers in 2021.

 

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have condemned the verdicts as politically motivated, citing a lack of fundamental procedural guarantees. For the families of those convicted, the ruling confirmed what they had suspected for months: the path to justice in Tunisia is no longer judicial. It is political.

 

 

 

 

Karim Merzouki has practised law in Tunisia for years. He now represents several of the detainees, and he remembers the night it all began.

 

President Kais Saied appeared on television and declared it unacceptable that certain people remained "outside accountability."

 

Within hours, a police memo alleging a conspiracy reached the Ministry of Justice. The case was transferred to counterterrorism investigators.

 

"The intention was clear," Merzouki said. "It came first, then the case was built around it."

 

What followed, he argued, inverted the logic of criminal procedure. Security forces raided homes and seized phones, computers, and documents.

 

"They found no weapons. No explosives. No operational plans," he told The New Arab. "One man was detained because his car had been parked near an opposition figure's residence."

 

Prosecutors built their case primarily on anonymous statements collected after the arrests, none from direct witnesses, all repeating secondhand information.

 

The first-instance judgment referenced an alleged report from a foreign intelligence service, though the document never appeared in the case file. Meetings with diplomats were cited as evidence of wrongdoing.

 

"Meeting diplomats is permitted and protected," Merzouki said. "We asked the court to hear those diplomats. If there were a conspiracy, they would be part of it. The request was refused."

 

The case file names roughly forty defendants. They share little in common beyond their criticism of the president. Anonymous witnesses cited figures like Bernard-Henri Lévy, whom none of the accused had ever met.

 

"The aim was to damage the opposition," Merzouki said. "From the beginning, we said this was a case of the authorities conspiring against their opponents, not a conspiracy against the state."

 

 

 

 

Hatem Nafti, a political analyst, has studied authoritarian transitions across the region. Tunisia, he noted, has known large political trials before. Under Bourguiba, Islamists faced prosecution in 1963; leftists were targeted in 1968. The state chose its enemies according to ideology.

 

"Even in those harsh moments, cases were separated by political family," Nafti told TNA. "The difference today is that everyone appears in the same file."

 

The current prosecution names leftists alongside liberals, businesspeople alongside activists, some with long histories of political engagement and others with none at all. For Nafti, the mixing is “deliberate and revealing.”

 

"The target is no longer an ideological rival," he said. "The target is the idea of opposition itself."

 

He situates the trial within a broader pattern he calls "authoritarian populism," a model built on moral division between a virtuous public and corrupt elites. Critics become traitors, saboteurs, foreign agents.

 

Since Saied's 2021 power grab, the institutions designed to check executive authority, the electoral commission, the High Judicial Council, as well as independent oversight bodies, have been dismantled or sidelined.

 

"The result is not an illiberal democracy like Hungary, where political competition still exists," Nafti said. "Tunisia is moving toward a model where politics itself is criminalised, where public media no longer hosts dissenting voices."

 

He draws comparisons to Egypt and Algeria. In all three countries, the security apparatus has expanded while pluralism contracts. The difference: in Cairo and Algiers, the ruling structure emerges directly from within the military and intelligence services. In Tunis, the presidency maintains a civilian façade, supported by the apparatus when convenient.

 

"The objective is similar," Nafti said. "Full control over the public space."

 

 

 

 

For three consecutive weeks, thousands have marched through central Tunis. They carry photographs of the detainees. They chant: "Opposition is not a crime." They chant: "The people want an end to the regime."

 

The demonstrations mark the largest anti-government protests since Saied consolidated power in 2021. For Chebbi's daughter, they represent a shift in public mood; the first indication that Tunisians are willing to take to the streets again.

 

"The street matters," she said. "This requires unity. Without pressure from society, nothing will change."

 

Hichem Ajbouni, a senior figure in the Democratic Current party, sees the trial producing consequences the government did not anticipate. Years of division among opposition factions have given way to coordination. Leftists speak with liberals. Secularists work alongside those they once opposed.

 

"We are not in a classic opposition phase any more," Ajbouni said. "We are in a phase of resistance."

 

He does not expect ideological alliances to form. The common ground is ending political prosecutions and restoring judicial independence.

 

"If we stay divided," he said, "we will be eliminated one by one."

 

Inside prison, Ayachi Hammami has refused food. His daughter, Fidaa, describes the hunger strike as an extension of the work her father has done for decades—a demand for release, a protest against the system that imprisoned him.

 

"My father's freedom depends on the country's freedom," she said. "The solution is political, not individual."

 

What happens next remains uncertain. Appeals will move through the Court of Cassation. The powerful UGTT union has yet to commit to the opposition's cause fully. Economic pressures mount on a government already struggling to secure international financing.

 

For the families, such calculations matter less than the simple fact of perseverance. Haifa Chebbi's father defended freedoms for 50 years. Now she carries that inheritance forward.

 

"We keep going because we do not have another choice," she said. "Now it is our turn."  - (ANA) -

 

AB/ANA/11 December 2025 - - -