The change of fortune for Ennahda Movement

 

The Islamist organization Ennahda reemerged in Tunisia after the Jasmine Revolution of 2011, and it has regularly been the largest party in parliament and the deciding factor in coalition governments. 

As a result, it has taken the brunt of the growing discontent among many Tunisians with its post-revolutionary political structure. Ennahda and its leader, Rached Ghannouchi, have attempted to fight the coup since President Kais Saied's seizure of power in July 2021 and the following dissolution of parliament without inciting a violent crackdown by the state or losing allies and party supporters.

Nevertheless, Tunisian courts barred Ghannouchi from leaving the country and froze the bank accounts of some Ennahda leaders in the run-up to a national referendum that was supposed to take place on July 25 to ratify a new draught constitution.

In its early years, Ennahda was known as the Movement of Islamic Tendency (MTI). It was started as a movement, following in the footsteps of other contemporary Islamist parties or groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, but it stood out in a number of significant aspects. First, the movement's doctrinal underpinnings were more varied than those of previous Islamist organizations.

President Beji Caid Essebsi said that the Ennahda political party had directly threatened him in an address he gave to the Tunisian National Security Council in Carthage in November 2018. He declared that he would not permit this threat to stand and that he would pursue legal action in this matter.

The statement was published by Ennahda mere hours after Essebsi met with some members of the "Committee for the Defense of Martyrs Chokri Belaid and Mohamed Brahmi," a group that claims to be in defense of two 2013 political murder victims. The committee is made up of attorneys who conducted their own inquiry after being dissatisfied with the results of the previous investigation.

The committee said in October 2018 that Ennahda was not only responsible for the murders but had also established a covert organization that had infiltrated government organizations in order to steal thousands of documents from the Tunisian Ministry of Interior. The judiciary must reopen the case, according to the committee.

The committee presented additional information to Essebsi during their meeting in November that purportedly showed Ennahda's covert organization had also plotted to kill Essebsi and the French president who was in office at the time in 2013. Ennahda vehemently refutes the allegations. According to Ennahda spokesman Emad al-Khamiri, there is no proof and these claims are merely used to harm Ennahda's reputation.

Rached Ghannouchi, the leader of the Ennahda movement, and 32 other individuals were accused of terrorism by the Tunisian judiciary on July 1.

In the case of the murders of Chokri Belaid and Mohamed Brahmi, 33 people, including the leader of the Ennahda movement, Rached Ghannouchi, were officially charged on Monday with membership in a terrorist organization, according to attorney Iman Gazara.

Chokri Belaid, the leader of the Democratic Patriots' Unified Party, was shot and killed in front of his home in the capital on February 6, 2013, and Brahmi, the leader of the Popular Current Party, was shot and killed in front of his home in the same location on July 5, 2013. Later, members of an affiliate of Daesh admitted to executing them.