Measure in place since a 2015 assault on a presidential guard bus claimed by the ISIL group.
The Tunisian presidency has introduced a six-month extension of the nation’s state of emergency, in place since a 2015 assault on a presidential guard bus claimed by the ISIL (ISIS) group.
President Kais Saied “selected the six-month extension of the nationwide state of emergency from December 26, 2020 to June 23, 2021”, an announcement mentioned on Friday.
The state of emergency was first declared on November 24, 2015, following the assault on the presidential guard, which killed 12 folks.
The measure, prolonged repeatedly since late 2015, grants distinctive powers to the nation’s safety forces. It permits measures to “make sure the management of the press” and for strikes and conferences that “create dysfunction” to be banned.
Rights teams have constantly denounced the measure, saying it has led to widespread human rights violations.
Tunisia has seen political and social instability in latest weeks, together with protests in a number of areas.
The nation confronted an increase in exercise by armed teams after its 2011 revolution, with assaults killing dozens of safety personnel, civilians and international vacationers.
The 2015 assault within the capital Tunis killed 12 presidential guards and got here after two different lethal assaults claimed by ISIL that yr: one on the capital’s Bardo museum and one other at a resort within the coastal metropolis of Sousse.
On Thursday, a person of “extremist look” tried to assault a police officer with a knife in Tunis whereas yelling “Allahu Akbar” (“God is the best” in Arabic), the inside ministry mentioned in an announcement.
Final Sunday, officers mentioned the decapitated physique of a 20-year-old man had been discovered within the nation’s central Kasserine area in a possible “terrorist” assault.
The mountainous central area can also be a hideout for the Tunisian department of the armed group al-Qaeda within the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), often called Okba Ibn Nafaa.
In addition to the state of emergency, a night-time curfew is in place in Tunisia to curb the unfold of the novel coronavirus, which has contaminated greater than 126,000 folks and killed over 4,300 within the nation, in accordance with well being ministry figures.