![Supporters of Tunisian President and presidential candidate, Moncef Marzouki (portrait) gather during a campaign meeting in Tunis. [FETHI BELAID/AFP via Getty Images]](https://i0.wp.com/www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/GettyImages-460452098-e1637052989189.jpg?fit=1199%2C800&ssl=1)
Former Tunisian President Mohamed Moncef Marzouki affirmed that the French authorities have refused to extradite him to Tunisia, after a Tunisian court issued an international arrest warrant against him.
In response to constitutional law Professor Rabeh Al-Kharaifi, who accused Marzouki of being a French citizen, the former president said: “How many times should I repeat that I have no other citizenship except the Tunisian one? How many times will they keep repeating the same lie and others?”
“They are all students of Goebbels, the Nazi Minister of Propaganda who taught them when he said: lie and lie, surely some remnants of the lie will remain.” Marzouki wrote in his Facebook page:
Marzouki previously denied that the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL) had issued an arrest warrant based on the prison sentence issued against him in Tunisia.
In December, the Court of First Instance in Tunisia sentenced Marzouki in absentia to four years imprisonment on charges of “attacking the state’s external security.”
HRW: Significant increase of trials in Tunisia for “offending the President”
Months ago, the same court issued an international arrest warrant against Marzouki, after he was accused by President Kais Saied of calling for foreign intervention in the country. His diplomatic passport was also withdrawn, which he received when he assumed the presidency in Tunisia in 2021.
In a previous statement to Arabi 21, Marzouki reacted to the judicial judgement issued against him by the Tunisian judiciary saying that it means nothing to him, since it is issued by illegal parties.
“I have nothing to say except laughter and sarcasm, I did not receive any summons warrant, I did not appoint any attorney to defend me, and I do not know any details about the progress of the case, except what I heard today like other people,” Marzouki said.
The firmer president pointed out that this judgment is evidence of President Kais Saied’s control of the judicial authority: “It is clear through the progress of this trial with its accusations and the judgment that all of them are politicised, which means that there is an attempt to return Tunisia to a worse situation than it was before during the era of Ben Ali, against whom the Tunisians revolted.”