A TUNISIAN court has imposed a travel ban on the speaker of the country’s now-dissolved parliament, a court spokesman said.

The interdiction against Rached Ghannouchi is part of an inquiry into alleged obstruction of justice in connection with the assassination in 2013 of two left-wing figures, the spokesman said yesterday.

The travel ban was imposed on “34 suspects in this case, including Rached Ghannouchi,” Fatima Bouqtaya, spokesman for the court in the Tunis suburb of Ariana, told AFP.

Ghannouchi heads the Islamist-inspired Ennahdha party that has dominated Tunisia’s post-revolution politics.

Ghannouchi, 81, is a fierce critic of President Kais Saied, who in July last year suspended the Ennahdha-dominated parliament, sacked the prime minister and assumed executive powers.

Saied then dissolved parliament in March this year. His moves have stoked fears of a return to autocracy in a country where a revolution in 2011 triggered the pro-democracy Arab Spring movement in the wider region.

Tunisia’s judiciary in January opened an investigation against the suspects for allegedly “concealing information” linked to the killing nine years ago of Chokri Belaid and Mohamed Brahmi.

The Islamic State group claimed both killings but Ennahdha critics, including a brother of one of the victims, accused the party of having “manipulated and slowed down” the case. – AFP, May 28, 2022.