Tunisia’s Ghannouchi in Court Again over Alleged Extremist Links

Rached Ghannouchi, the head of Tunisia's Ennahda party and speaker of the dissolved parliament, gestures after his questioning at the office of the counter-terrorism prosecutor in Tunis, Tunisia, 21 September 2022. (EPA)
Rached Ghannouchi, the head of Tunisia's Ennahda party and speaker of the dissolved parliament, gestures after his questioning at the office of the counter-terrorism prosecutor in Tunis, Tunisia, 21 September 2022. (EPA)
TT

Tunisia’s Ghannouchi in Court Again over Alleged Extremist Links

Rached Ghannouchi, the head of Tunisia's Ennahda party and speaker of the dissolved parliament, gestures after his questioning at the office of the counter-terrorism prosecutor in Tunis, Tunisia, 21 September 2022. (EPA)
Rached Ghannouchi, the head of Tunisia's Ennahda party and speaker of the dissolved parliament, gestures after his questioning at the office of the counter-terrorism prosecutor in Tunis, Tunisia, 21 September 2022. (EPA)

The speaker of Tunisia's dissolved parliament appeared on Monday before a judge investigating accusations his party helped Tunisian extremists travel to fight in Iraq and Syria.  

Rached Ghannouchi, an arch-rival of President Kais Saied and also head of the Islamist-inspired Ennahda party, arrived in the morning at the anti-terror court in a suburb of the capital Tunis, said one of his lawyers, Mokhtar Jemai.  

At the end of the hearing, the judge is expected to decide whether or not to charge the 81-year-old. 

Several other Ennahdha officials have been questioned on the "shipment of extremists" case since Saied sacked the Ennahda-supported government and seized full executive authority in July 2021.  

After Tunisia's 2011 revolt, thousands of Tunisians joined extremist groups in neighboring Libya as well as the ISIS group in its strongholds in Iraq and Syria.  

Rivals of Ennahda, which dominated Tunisian politics from 2011 until Saied's power grab, accuse the party of helping them leave.  

The party has repeatedly rejected those accusations as "fabricated" and says authorities are trying to distract public attention from "economic and social concerns and the deterioration of people's living conditions".  

Ghannouchi also appeared before a judge on November 10 as part of a case involving money-laundering and "incitement to violence". 



Amnesty Accuses Israel of 'Live-streamed Genocide' against Gaza Palestinians

TOPSHOT - Palestinians inspect the damage after an Israeli strike on the Yafa school building, a school-turned-shelter, in Gaza City on April 23, 2025. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)
TOPSHOT - Palestinians inspect the damage after an Israeli strike on the Yafa school building, a school-turned-shelter, in Gaza City on April 23, 2025. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)
TT

Amnesty Accuses Israel of 'Live-streamed Genocide' against Gaza Palestinians

TOPSHOT - Palestinians inspect the damage after an Israeli strike on the Yafa school building, a school-turned-shelter, in Gaza City on April 23, 2025. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)
TOPSHOT - Palestinians inspect the damage after an Israeli strike on the Yafa school building, a school-turned-shelter, in Gaza City on April 23, 2025. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)

Amnesty International on Tuesday accused Israel of committing a "live-streamed genocide" against Palestinians in Gaza by forcibly displacing most of the population and deliberately creating a humanitarian catastrophe.

In its annual report, Amnesty charged that Israel had acted with "specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza, thus committing genocide".

Israel has rejected accusations of "genocide" from Amnesty, other rights groups and some states in its war in Gaza.

The conflict erupted after the Palestinian group Hamas's deadly October 7, 2023 attacks inside Israel that resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

Hamas also abducted 251 people, 58 of whom are still held in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.

Israel in response launched a relentless bombardment of the Gaza Strip and a ground operation that according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory has left at least 52,243 dead.

"Since 7 October 2023, when Hamas perpetrated horrific crimes against Israeli citizens and others and captured more than 250 hostages, the world has been made audience to a live-streamed genocide," Amnesty's secretary general Agnes Callamard said in the introduction to the report.

"States watched on as if powerless, as Israel killed thousands upon thousands of Palestinians, wiping out entire multigenerational families, destroying homes, livelihoods, hospitals and schools," she added.

'Extreme levels of suffering'

Gaza's civil defense agency said early Tuesday that four people were killed and others injured in an Israeli air strike on displaced persons' tents near the Al-Iqleem area in Southern Gaza.

The agency earlier warned fuel shortages meant it had been forced to suspend eight out of 12 emergency vehicles in Southern Gaza, including ambulances.

The lack of fuel "threatens the lives of hundreds of thousands of citizens and displaced persons in shelter centers," it said in a statement.

Amnesty's report said the Israeli campaign had left most of the Palestinians of Gaza "displaced, homeless, hungry, at risk of life-threatening diseases and unable to access medical care, power or clean water".

Amnesty said that throughout 2024 it had "documented multiple war crimes by Israel, including direct attacks on civilians and civilian objects, and indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks".

It said Israel's actions forcibly displaced 1.9 million Palestinians, around 90 percent of Gaza's population, and "deliberately engineered an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe".

Even as protesters hit the streets in Western capitals, "the world's governments individually and multilaterally failed repeatedly to take meaningful action to end the atrocities and were slow even in calling for a ceasefire".

Meanwhile, Amnesty also sounded alarm over Israeli actions in the occupied Palestinian territory of the West Bank, and repeated an accusation that Israel was employing a system of "apartheid".

"Israel's system of apartheid became increasingly violent in the occupied West Bank, marked by a sharp increase in unlawful killings and state-backed attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinian civilians," it said.

Heba Morayef, Amnesty director for the Middle East and North Africa region, denounced "the extreme levels of suffering that Palestinians in Gaza have been forced to endure on a daily basis over the past year" as well as "the world's complete inability or lack of political will to put a stop to it".