A Tunis court on Friday, February 23, ordered an eight-year jail term for exiled ex-president Moncef Marzouki after he was found guilty of "inciting people to arms", "provoking disorder and looting", said Mosaique FM radio, quoting a judicial source. Marzouki, 78, Tunisia's first democratically elected head of state after the country's 2011 Arab Spring revolution and now a virulent critic of President Kais Saied, lives in France and was not present at the hearing.

Marzouki, who was charged after making several statements on social media, had already been sentenced to prison for four years in 2021 for threatening state security after calling for France to end its support for Saied at a Paris demonstration. Since November 2021, he has also been the target of a Tunisian arrest warrant after the current president called him an "enemy of Tunisia" and withdrew his diplomatic passport.

Elected democratically in 2019 with a five-year mandate, Saied launched a power grab in July 2021, dismissing the prime minister and suspending parliament. He later pushed through sweeping changes to concentrate power in his office.

Marzouki has since stepped up his statements on television and social media calling Saied a "dictator" who has to be overthrown. Before the Arab Spring, Marzouki was a long-time opponent of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, the strongman who ruled Tunisia from 1987 until 2011.