Tunisia's Islamist leader Ghannouchi sentenced to 3 years in prison
A new blow to the Muslim Brotherhood in Tunisia. A Tunisian judge has sentenced Rached Ghannouchi, leader of the opposition Islamist Ennahda party, to three more years in prison. Ghannouchi, who has been in prison since April, has been accused of receiving foreign funding along with his son-in-law, Rafik Abdessalem, a senior Ennahda official.
In its general report on the results of monitoring the financing of advertising campaigns for the previous 2019 presidential and legislative elections, the Tunisian Court of Auditors noted that the Ennahda party "contracted in 2014 with the US advertising and lobbying company BCW for a period of 4 years for the amount of 285 thousand dollars".
This contract was renewed from 16 July 2019 to 17 December 2019 for an amount of $187,000, which the court considered "suspicion of external financing" according to the text of Chapter 163 of the Electoral Law.
In addition, the Islamist party has also been fined 1.1 million dollars. Ennahda, which is linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, denied the accusations in a statement in which it called the ruling "unjust", assuring that it will continue to defend itself and fight against injustice.
In the statement, he also said that the party has never received funding from any foreign entity, and its only account is under the supervision of all judicial and financial institutions and is fully transparent and impeccable.
Last year, Tunisian authorities banned meetings in all Ennahda offices. Moreover, police shut down the headquarters of the Salvation Front, the main opposition coalition, in what human rights groups called a de facto ban.
Ghannouchi, 82, was arrested last April and sentenced to one year in prison for advocating terrorism, inciting violence and conspiring against state security. The Tunisian Islamist leader declared that Tunisia would be threatened with "civil war" if leftist parties, or those from political Islam like his own, were removed from the political scene.
He was also denounced by a police union for comments he made in early 2022 during the funeral of an Ennahda official whom he said "did not fear the powerful or tyrants", the word for police officers, according to the prosecutor's file.
