Tunisia’s ex-president Moncef Marzouki sentenced to 8 years in absentia

A court in Tunisia sentenced former president Moncef Marzouki to eight years in prison in absentia as part of the country’s crackdown on opponents of President Kais Saied.
The charges against Marzouki, who lives in Paris, stemmed from remarks he made that authorities said violated laws against incitement and calling for the overthrow of the government, court spokesperson Mohamed Zitouna told Tunisia’s state news agency TAP on Friday evening.
His attorney, Samir Ben Amor, told The Associated Press that the sentence illustrates “the hardening of the political line taken by the government against opponents.”
Marzouki served as the first democratically elected president of Tunisia from 2011 to 2014, after Arab Spring protests led autocratic President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali to step down and flee the country. A longtime human rights activist, Marzouki has emerged as a vocal critic of President Kais Saied’s moves to consolidate his own power and revise Tunisia’s post-Arab Spring constitution.