Tunisia's Kais Saied accuses detainees of being terrorists and causing food shortages

President pledges to reform costly subsidies system

Tunisia's President Kais Saied. Reuters

Tunisia's President Kais Saied on Tuesday accused people detained in a wave of recent arrests of being responsible for food shortages and price increases, saying they wanted to fuel a social crisis.

Mr Saied, in his first official comments on the arrests made, during a meeting with Tunisia's trade minister on Tuesday vowed to “clean the country”.

Since Saturday police have detained a number of leading figures with links to the opposition or to critics of Mr Saied, including prominent politicians, a powerful businessman and the head of Tunisia's largest private radio station.

“The recent arrests have shown that a number of criminals involved in conspiring against the internal and external security of the state are the ones behind the crises by distributing food stuff and raising their prices,” Mr Saied said during the meeting, according to a video posted online.

He did not give any details on which of the detained people he was referring to or how they were responsible for the crisis.

In the video, Mr Saied was shown calling on judges to take appropriate decisions against “the traitors who seek to fuel the social crisis”.

The Tunisian president, during an overnight visit to the headquarters of the Interior Ministry on Tuesday, also accused those arrested of being terrorists and plotting to assassinate him.

“We will not leave Tunisia an easy prey for these criminals and terrorists who want to take advantage of the Tunisian people and dismantle the Tunisian state,” Mr Saied said.

He accused the detained of conspiring against the internal and external security of the state “with the aim of overthrowing it”.

Mr Saied denied that the arrests had anything to do with targeting rights and freedoms in the country, stating that all procedures were respected and took place within the framework of the law.

“The claim that [legal] procedures were not respected only aims to obliterate the truth and enable some to escape prosecution,” Mr Saied added.

A Tunisian man reads a newspaper in Tunis on Tuesday after a crackdown that has targeted activists, former lawyers and a prominent businessman. AFP

Meanwhile, Tunisia's Foreign Minister Nabil Ammar denounced statements from international bodies expressing concern over the arrests, saying they were "hasty, inaccurate and untrue", in comments to state news agency TAP.

It comes after the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said it appeared the arrests targeted critics of the government and warned of "the exacerbation of repression against political opponents and representatives of civil society in Tunisia through measures which continue to undermine the independence of the judiciary".

Mr Ammar echoed the sentiments of the president, saying that the arrests were nothing to do with human rights but were related to serious national security matters.

Several Tunisian civil society organisations denounced the wave of arrests since Saturday and accused the Tunisian president of undermining the independence of the judiciary.

President of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Tunisian Human Rights League, Bassem Trifi, said that Mr Saied's statements destroyed "the presumption of innocence [for all detainees] and the elements of a fair trial", in a statement on his personal Facebook page.

"Through declaring that the detainees are criminals and terrorists, the president is issuing his final and conclusive verdicts without waiting for an investigation and judicial rulings," Mr Trifi said.

Tunisians have been suffering for months from shortages of food, including sugar, cooking oil, coffee, milk and butter.

Economic experts say the shortages, which have affected subsidised products, are mainly caused by a crisis in public finances as the state attempts to avert bankruptcy while negotiating an international bailout.

They say generous food subsidies can exacerbate shortages during times of crisis and urge subsidy reductions, which the Tunisian government has begun implementing. “The current subsidies system is a failure and very costly for public finances,” Mr Saied recently said.

Economists say any positive effect of subsidy reductions, including an increase in supply, is slow to emerge. In the meantime, shortages continue and public anger shows no sign of abating.