Tunisian ex-president defends Ennahda from allegations

By Adil Essabiti

TUNIS (AA) - Former President Moncef Marzouki has condemned allegations that Tunisia’s Ennahda movement was maintaining a “secret apparatus”, describing the claims as “baseless”.

Last year, a group of lawyers accused Ennahda of maintaining "a secret apparatus" for carrying out political assassinations -- allegations the group strenuously denies.

In 2013, Chokri Belaid, leader of Tunisia’s opposition Democratic Patriots Party, and Mohamed Brahmi, a member of the People’s Movement Party, were both gunned down in separate incidents that remain unsolved to this day.

In a Monday interview with Tunisia’s Radio Diwan FM, Marzouki, who served as president from 2011 to 2014, described the lawyers’ claims as “nonsense and entirely baseless”.

He blamed the allegations, for which no evidence has been produced, on what he described as “foreign elements actively seeking to purge Tunisia of political Islam in general and Ennahda in particular”.

According to Marzouki, the false accusations are intended to tarnish Ennahda’s reputation in advance of elections slated for later this year.

He went on, however, to warn the group against what he called “corrupt businessmen and international powers seeking to pressure Ennahda into making political concessions”.

On Sunday, Marzouki urged Ennahda to forge a coalition with his Congress for the Republic party instead of its current partnership with the Nidaa Tunis party.

In the same radio interview, Marzouki described Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates as "arms of an octopus working together to restore previous regimes".

The assertion was likely a reference to ousted President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, who fled to Saudi Arabia -- where he still resides -- following Tunisia’s 2011 popular uprising.