The request comes on the heels of the April 17 arrest of opposition chief Rached Ghannouchi.
Relations of political detainees in Tunisia have submitted a request to the European Union to sanction President Kais Saied and different top-ranking Tunisian officers.
The request, filed by British lawyer Rodney Dixon on behalf of the households, accuses Tunisian officers of “gross and chronic human rights violations”, in response to a press launch issued on Wednesday by Dixon.
The opposite high-ranking officers the households search to sanction are Ridha Gharsallaoui, former performing inside minister; Taofik Charfeddine, the just lately resigned inside minister; Kamal Feki, the present inside minister; Leïla Jaffel, the justice minister; and Imed Memmich, minister of nationwide defence.
“What has been unfolding in Tunisia since July 2021 is a spiralling decline into worse and worse violations of elementary freedoms and rights,” the lawyer mentioned.
“On behalf of our purchasers, we urge the EU to behave swiftly and decisively in imposing sanctions on the Tunisian authorities who bear the best duty,” Dixon mentioned.
The request comes on the heels of the April 17 arrest of Rached Ghannouchi, a serious opposition determine and chief of the Ennahdha occasion.
It was a part of an ongoing crackdown towards the Tunisian opposition. In July 2021, Saied dissolved the democratically elected parliament, during which Ennahda was the most important occasion, after which moved to alter the structure, centralising energy in his arms.
The households said that since Saeid’s authoritarian shift in 2021, his authorities has dedicated “mass violations of human rights in Tunisia, together with the continuing arrest, torture and in some instances killing of anybody deemed to be in opposition to them”.
The sanctions the households requested included banning the officers from journey to the EU, having their EU-based belongings frozen, and barring them from doing enterprise and having accounts within the EU.
“Saied and his accomplices have to be made accountable by putting sanctions on them,” Yusra Ghannouchi, the daughter of Rached Ghannouchi, mentioned, in response to the discharge.
“The EU should transfer past timid expressions of concern as they’ve clearly didn’t persuade Saied to cease or decelerate his reckless destruction of Tunisia’s democracy,” she added.
A number of world powers have condemned the arrests of political opponents in Tunisia, together with Ghannouchi, warning towards the escalating crackdown.
