Hammami, who served as minister of human rights in 2020, appeared in a video posted on his Facebook page, recorded before the arrest. “If you are seeing this video, I have been arrested,” he said. “I have spent years fighting for democracy, freedom, rights. I will turn my cell into a new front of struggle.” His family said he plans to begin a hunger strike.
Last week, police also detained opposition figure Chaima Issa during a protest in Tunis to enforce a 20-year sentence handed down in the same case. The opposition maintains the charges are fabricated and designed to silence Saied’s critics through the courts. Authorities argue that the defendants, including former officials and ex-intelligence chief Kamel Guizani, attempted to destabilise the country and topple the president. Saied insists he does not interfere with the judiciary and that no one is above the law.
When the investigation began in 2023, Saied referred to the politicians involved as “traitors and terrorists”, warning that any judges who cleared them would be considered accomplices. Police are also widely expected to arrest Najib Chebbi, head of the National Salvation Front, the main opposition coalition. Chebbi received a 12-year sentence in the case, which involved 40 defendants and is regarded as one of the largest political prosecutions in Tunisia in recent years.
Twenty defendants have fled abroad and were sentenced in absentia. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International condemned the verdicts and called for the immediate annulment of all sentences, describing them as a sharp escalation in Saied’s crackdown on dissent since he assumed extraordinary powers in 2021