Jailed Tunisian opposition leader Rached Ghannouchi starts hunger strike for Gaza

Imprisoned Tunisian opposition leader Rached Ghannouchi has started a hunger strike to express his solidarity with Gaza.

His legal defence team said on Friday that Ghannouchi would be undergoing a symbolic hunger strike for three days “in solidarity with calls demanding the lifting of the blockade on Gaza and an end to the genocide and campaign of starvation being inflicted on the valiant people of Gaza”.

His daughter, Soumaya Ghannouchi, a regular commentator for Middle East Eye, said her father went on a hunger strike “in solidarity with the starving people besieged in besieged and suffering Gaza. As a prisoner, he owns nothing but his own body, and he spares no effort for Palestine and Gaza”.

Rached Ghannouchi, leader of Ennahda, the party that dominated Tunisian politics before President Kais Saied’s power grab four years ago, has been in prison since April 2023.

Ghannouchi was the parliament speaker when Saied suspended the assembly and dissolved the government, a move critics have called a “coup”.

In a context of crackdown on dissent and trials denounced as unfair by rights NGOs, Ghannouchi has received several heavy prison sentences, including a 14-year prison term last month for “plotting against the state” and a 22-year sentence handed to him in February on the same charge.