Tunisian police detain Ennahda leader Ghannouchi, evacuate party headquarters

TUNIS (Reuters) - Tunisian police on Monday detained Ennahda party leader Rached Ghannouchi, the most prominent critic of president Kais Saied, his party said, a move marking an escalation of a campaign of arrests that has targeted many high-profile opponents of Saied.

Hours after Ghannouchi's arrest, police raided the party ‮ headquarters‬ and evacuated all present to start a search that will take days, after showing a judicial warrant, party officials told Reuters.

Police raided Ghannouchi's house on Monday evening, searching it before taking him to what the Islamist Ennahda called an "unknown destination".

‮"‬It is an attempt to hit Ennahda and opposition parties. We have a fear that it will be a prelude to a freeze on the party," Riadh Chaibi, a senior party official told Reuters.

Police have this year detained leading political figures who accuse Saied of a coup for his moves to close the elected parliament in 2021 and move to rule by decree before rewriting the constitution.

The earlier arrests, that have led to charges of conspiring against state security, have drawn statements of concern from the U.S. and rights groups.

An interior ministry official said Ghannouchi had been brought in for questioning and his house searched on the orders of the public prosecutor investigating "inciting statements".

Ghannouchi said in an opposition meeting on Saturday, "Tunisia without Ennahda, without political Islam, without the left, or any other component, is a project for civil war."

The 81-year-old, who was in exile in the 1990s and returned during Tunisia's 2011 revolution that brought democracy, said those who ‮"‬celebrated the coup are extremists and terrorists‮"‬.

Ghannouchi has faced repeated rounds of judicial questioning over the past year on charges relating to Ennahda's finances and to allegations it helped Islamists travel to Syria for jihad, charges he and the party both deny.

Since Saied's seizure of broad powers, which the president says was needed to save Tunisia from years of crisis, Ghannouchi has been the biggest political party leader to oppose him.

(Reporting by Tarek Amara, Writing by Angus McDowall; Editing by Alison Williams and Sonali Paul)