Tunisia's Ennahda party says its senior official Bhairi released from house arrest

Tunisia's moderate Islamist Ennahda party said on Facebook that its senior official, Noureddine Bhairi, was freed from house arrest early on Tuesday.

The Tunisian Interior Ministry had lifted the house arrest order against Bhairi, the state news agency (TAP) reported late on Monday.

Bhairi was placed under house arrest due to illegal submission of passports and nationality documents and a serious suspicion of terrorism, according to the interior minister.

Bhairi, who was detained in December, was the party’s first senior official to be detained since President Kais Saied dismissed Parliament and seized governing powers in July in a move that Ennahda and some other parties have called a coup.

Since Saied's July intervention, several senior politicians and business leaders have been detained or subjected to legal prosecution, often involving cases of corruption or defamation.

Rights groups have criticised some of those arrests and the use of military courts to hear such cases.

However, there has been no widespread campaign of arrests of critics of Saied or other dissidents and the state news agency has continued to report news that is unfavourable to the government.