Ex-Tunisia Government spokesperson denies ties to espionage case

Background

There are currently 32 defendants in the Instalingo case in Tunisia and a number of the Company’s employees have been detained and charged with “committing a dangerous act against the Head of State”, “conspiracy against the internal security of the State” and espionage.

The investigations included several journalists, bloggers, freelancers and politicians, such as the Speaker of the dissolved Parliament, Rached Ghannouchi, his daughter, and son-in-law, Rafik Abdessalem, and the former official spokesman for the Ministry of Interior, Mohamed Ali Aroui.

The Instalingo case

The Defence Committee of the former spokesman of the Tunisian Ministry of Interior, Mohamed Ali Aroui, denied any connection relating Aroui with the Instalingo case, and considered inserting his name in the case as a “settling of political scores”.

This came during a press conference held by Aroui’s Defence Committee, on Wednesday, in the capital, Tunis.

The member of the Committee, Nidhal Salhi, said: “The Instalingo case comes within a purely political framework and has nothing to do with judicial proceedings, and Aroui’s name has been inserted to settling of political scores.”

Salhi called on the Minister of Interior, Taoufik Charfeddine, and Minister of Justice, Leila Jaffel, to “lift their hands of Aroui’s file”.

Aroui was arrested a month ago in the Instalingo case, a Company specialising in creating content and digital communication, on charges of espionage, extortion and taking advantage of the features of his position to seize the money of others and participating in that.

According to a letter addressed by Aroui to the public opinion, which was published by the Committee, he “has nothing to do with all the defendants in the case attributed to him, except for a blogger who cooperated with the Ministry of the Interior from 2013 until 2019 during Aroui’s heading of the Liaison Office in the Tunisian Ministry of Interior, and when he assumed responsibility as a Security Attaché at the Tunisian Consulate in Turkiye.”

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In his letter, Aroui stressed that “all successive ministers in the Ministry are aware of this cooperation in the context of combating terrorism and assassinations and supporting the morale of the Armed Forces.”

He also stressed that “this blogger’s relationship with the Instalingo Company began in late 2020”.

The development of the Instalingo Company case date back to last October, when a number of its employees were arrested on charges including “committing a serious action against the President”, conspiracy against internal State security and espionage”.

The investigations included several journalists, bloggers, freelancers and politicians, including the Speaker of the dissolved Parliament, Rashid Ghannouchi, his daughter, his son-in-law, Rafik Abdel Salam and Aroui.

Since 25 July 2021, Tunisia has witnessed a severe political crisis when President Kais Saied imposed exceptional measures, including dissolving the Parliament and the Supreme Judicial Council, issuing legislation by presidential decrees, and setting an early date for parliamentary elections to be on next 17 December.

Tunisian forces consider these measures as a “coup against the Constitution”, while other forces see them as a “correction of the course of the 2011 revolution”, which toppled former President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

While Saied, who began a five-year presidential term in 2019, said that his measures are “measures under the provisions of the Constitution to protect the State from danger.”