As President Kais Saied ramps up his assault on the democratic gains of the Arab Spring of 2011, he has resorted to investigating Tunisian opposition MPs. This information is published by Amnesty International. Here is an excerpt:

Tunisian authorities have opened criminal investigations against at least 20 members of the now-dissolved parliament who took part in an online plenary session convened by parliamentarians on 30 March to protest President Kais Saied’s power grab, Amnesty International said today. Tunisian police have summoned at least 10 MPs and interrogated at least nine of them, while the Tunis Court of Appeals prosecutor has informed the bar association that an additional ten MPs are facing investigations. 

The investigations were opened shortly after President Saied’s speech on 30 March in which he called the online plenary session “an attempted coup” and “a conspiracy against internal and external state security,” and announced that MPs would be criminally prosecuted.

“These politically motivated criminal investigations amount to judicial harassment and are an attempt to stifle peaceful exercise of the rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association by members of the parliament that President Saied first suspended and has now dissolved by decree. The investigations are the latest in a series of deeply worrying repressive moves by Tunisian authorities and must be immediately dropped,” said Heba Morayef, Amnesty International’s Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa.

“The fact that the investigations were launched the same day that President Saied ordered them speaks volumes about the ever-tightening grip he has on the criminal justice system — and authorities’ increasing misuse of the courts to target state critics.”

Read the full article here.