Tunisia orders arrest of former presidential candidate

The Tunisian government has issued an arrest warrant for a former presidential candidate, Nabil Karoui and his brother, a day after reports that they were detained in neighbouring Algeria.

Karoui was runner-up in Tunisia’s 2019 presidential election, a poll won by Kais Saied, who in July this year, suspended parliament and granted himself sweeping presidential powers.

Since then, there has been a wave of travel bans and house arrests targeting parliamentarians, magistrates and businessmen in an anti-corruption purge that has raised fears of a decline in freedoms.

Local media reported on Wednesday that Karoui, the Qalb Tounes party chief and his brother, MP Ghazi Karoui, were taken into custody in Algeria.

Riadh al-Nouioui, spokesman for the Kasserine court in central Tunisia, told a press conference that an “arrest warrant has been issued against Nabil and Ghazi Karoui for illegally crossing the border while there is a movement restriction on him and his brother.”

READ ALSO: TUNISIA: Court refuses request to release detained presidential candidate ahead of run-off

“A person suspected of helping the pair to leave the country had been arrested the day before,” al-Nouioui said without elaborating.

Karoui has been under investigation since 2017 in a money laundering and tax evasion case and arrested and detained in 2019 where he spent more than a month in prison at the height of the presidential election campaign.

He was freed but rearrested last December and spent six months in pre-trial detention before being let out again in June.
Karoui came second in the 2019 election to Saied, a retired law professor and political newcomer, as the electorate rejected the political class that had ruled since the 2011 revolution.

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