TUNIS: Tunisian police on Thursday arrested former prime minister Hamadi Jebali, an ex-senior figure in the Ennahdha party which is the nemesis of current President Kais Saied, Jebali’s lawyer said.
He could not say why Jebali was detained.
“The police arrested Mr.Jebali in his car in Soussa, then took him to Tunis,” Zied Taher said.
For more than a month, Jebali has been under investigation over activities at his boiler factory in Soussa, a coastal city south of the capital, Taher said.
The arrest comes with civil society and Saied’s opponents fearing a slide back to the authoritarianism seen under long-time dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, toppled in a 2011 revolution.
Ennahdha was the dominant force in a parliament dissolved by Saied after he sacked the government and seized wide-ranging powers last July.
Private radio station Mosaique FM said Jebali had been remanded in custody by anti-terrorist police “on suspicion of money-laundering.”
Jebali led the Tunisian government from December 2011, a year after the start of the country’s revolution, until his resignation in early 2013 following the murder of leftist activist Chokri Belaid.
In 2014 he quit politics and left Ennahdha.
A solar engineer and former journalist, Jebali was sentenced to 16 years behind bars under Ben Ali as anti-Islamist repression intensified.
He served a large part of his sentence in an isolation cell before being pardoned in 2006.
Tunisia ex-PM Jebali arrested: lawyer
https://arab.news/nvavx
Tunisia ex-PM Jebali arrested: lawyer
- "The police arrested Mr Jebali in his car in Soussa, then took him to Tunis," Zied Taher said
- Jebali has been under investigation over activities at his boiler factory in Soussa
Iran temporarily closes airspace to most flights
WASHINGTON: Iran temporarily closed its airspace to all flights except international ones to and from Iran with official permission at 5:15 p.m. ET on Wednesday, according to a notice posted on the Federal Aviation Administration’s website.
The prohibition is set to last for more than two hours until 7:30 p.m. ET, or 0030 GMT, but could be extended, the notice said. The United States was withdrawing some personnel from bases in the Middle East, a US official said on Wednesday, after a senior Iranian official said Tehran had warned neighbors it would hit American bases if Washington strikes.
Missile and drone barrages in a growing number of conflict zones represent a high risk to airline traffic. India’s largest airline, IndiGo said some of its international flights would be impacted by Iran’s sudden airspace closure. A flight by Russia’s Aeroflot bound for Tehran returned to Moscow after the closure, according to tracking data from Flightradar24.
Earlier on Wednesday, Germany issued a new directive cautioning the country’s airlines from entering Iranian airspace, shortly after Lufthansa rejigged its flight operations across the Middle East amid escalating tensions in the region.
The United States already prohibits all US commercial flights from overflying Iran and there are no direct flights between the countries. Airline operators like flydubai and Turkish Airlines have canceled multiple flights to Iran in the past week. “Several airlines have already reduced or suspended services, and most carriers are avoiding Iranian airspace,” said Safe Airspace, a website run by OPSGROUP, a membership-based organization that shares flight risk information.
“The situation may signal further security or military activity, including the risk of missile launches or heightened air defense, increasing the risk of misidentification of civil traffic.” Lufthansa said on Wednesday that it would bypass Iranian and Iraqi airspace until further notice while it would only operate day flights to Tel Aviv and Amman from Wednesday until Monday next week so that crew would not have to stay overnight.
Some flights could also be canceled as a result of these actions, it added in a statement. Italian carrier ITA Airways, in which Lufthansa Group is now a major shareholder, said that it would similarly suspend night flights to Tel Aviv until Tuesday next week.
