He is accused of threatening public order for claiming that the president has asked the army to close the headquarters of a powerful union. For this reason, a Tunisian journalist, Salah Attia, was under investigation and, according to what a witness reported, was also arrested.
The reporter told Al Jazeera that President Kais Saied had asked the army to close the UGTT union headquarters and place political leaders under house arrest, but which the army had refused. “Plainclothes police arrested Attia in a café on the outskirts of Ibn Khaldun in the capital,” the witness, who was with Attia, told Reuters over the phone.
Authorities have not confirmed the news. Saied has faced mounting criticism since he took power last summer, thanks, according to his opponents, to a coup. The president last month called for a national dialogue to be drawn up to draft a “new constitution for a new republic” and excluded the main political parties from the confrontation. Other major players such as the UGTT have refused to participate in what they believe would have been a dialogue with a predetermined outcome. On Thursday, the leader of the UGTT, which has about 1 million members, said he was “targeted” by the authorities after refusing to participate in the talks.