Tunisia's former PM arrested for smuggling citizens to fight in Syria

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Former Tunisian PM and VP of the Ennahda party, Ali Larayedh, is now under arrest for smuggling citizens into Syria to join militant groups.

Before his official indictment, he was questioned for eight hours by the counter-terrorism judicial pole according to his lawyer, Ines Harrath. But this doesn't count as his first run-in with the law, regarding similar charges.

Ennahda's leader, Rached Ghannouchi, was also called in for questioning. Al-Mayadeen's correspondent also reported that  Tunisian security arrested the former leader of Ennahda, Habib El-Louz, on charges of sending Tunisians to fight in Syria.

"A special squad has arrested Tunisian Ennahda movement's Habib El-Louz in the city of Sfax in the country's center, as part of ongoing investigations into a case related to recruiting Tunisians and sending them to fight in Syria," as per local security and media sources.

Back in September, he was detained on claims of trafficking Tunisian citizens so that they could join terrorist organizations like ISIS. Ennahda condemned the interrogation as a "flagrant violation of human rights" in a statement. 

During his time as the country's PM, Larayedh was accused of being too open to the idea of citizens traveling to Turkey, which was the hub for extremists joining armed groups to fight in Syria.

A calculated 6,000 Tunisians have joined groups in Syria and Iraq, after which a parliamentary panel was created in 2017 to investigate the organizations accountable for recruiting the members. Leftist groups pointed fingers at the Ennahda party and Larayedh for committing the crime. 

However, Ennahda rejected all claims and labeled the ruling as an effort to conceal “the catastrophic loss of the election” and as a political attack on Kais Saied’s opponent.

Many Tunisians viewed the elections as a way to fortify Saied's position of power after being boycotted by most political parties.