Tunisian political activist Khayam Turki was arrested on Saturday by the police, his lawyer said without being able to specify the reasons for this arrest.
“Around 6 a.m., he (Khayam Turki) was arrested by police officers who searched his house before taking him to an unknown destination,” lawyer Abdelaziz Essid told AFP.
Mr. Turki was not the subject of “any legal proceedings” likely to justify his arrest, added the lawyer without being able to give other details.
Turki, 58, comes from the Ettakatol party, a small social-democratic party which allied with the Islamo-conservative Ennahdha party in the so-called “troika” cabinet between 2011 and 2014.
His name had circulated as a possible candidate for the presidency of the government after the resignation of ex-Prime Minister Elyes Fakhfakh in 2020.
Since the coup by President Kais Saied who assumed full powers in July 2021, several politicians have been the subject of legal proceedings denounced by the opposition as settling political scores.
The opposition accuses Saied of establishing an authoritarian regime that suppresses freedoms and threatens democracy in Tunisia, where the first Arab Spring revolt in 2011 overthrew Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.