A prominent Tunisian activist was arrested on Saturday as hundreds protested in the capital against the curtailing of freedoms, an AFP journalist and lawyers said.
The protest in Tunis came a day after a mass appeal trial saw some 40 public figures, mainly critics of President Kais Saied, handed hefty sentences over plotting against the state.
Poet and political figure Chaima Issa, who was handed a 20-year sentence during the trial on Friday, was arrested during the rally, lawyers and witnesses said.
“We were marching in the protest when a group of plainclothes officers grabbed her and pushed her inside a vehicle,” Issa’s lawyer, Samir Dilou, told AFP.
“They could have arrested her the day of the verdict at her home,” Dilou added. “She wasn’t going anywhere. If she wanted to go on the run, why would she be demonstrating?”
The protest, called by Tunisia’s leading women rights groups the Association of Democratic Women (ATFD) and Aswat Nissa, denounced what many see as a growing clampdown on dissent and rights defenders in Tunisia.
“This protest comes amid the authorities’ systematic suppression of free speech and the free voices of activists, journalists and others,” said Nadia Benhamed, a senior member of the ATFD.