TUNIS - The Islamist leader Rachid Ghannouchi came back yesterday (Sunday, January 30) in Tunisia after twenty years of exile spent in London. Waiting for him at the airport of the capital a crowd of supporters in the party, which since the early hours of the morning was massed in front of the arrival of international flights. Ghannouchi, like other members of the Islamic party Annadha (Arabic for "rebirth"), had left the country in 1991 after the dissolution of the movement desired by former president Ben Ali. Still weighs on him a life sentence pronounced by a court in Tunis, but the Minister of Justice the new transitional government has already issued an order to revise the political processes and sentences imposed under the old regime opponents.
Rachid Ghannouchi has created in the seventies, the Islamic Group, an association dedicated to the recovery of illegal religious and political dimension of Islam in the Tunisian territory. The group draws inspiration from the writings of Sayyid Qutb and the experience of the Muslim Brotherhood, which came into direct contact Ghannouchi in the four years in Syria (1964-1968 Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Damascus). "The Our goal was to convince people that Islam represented not only tradition, but also a way of life, a global system, "says the same leader during an interview with Vincent Geisser in June 2001. "At first the State and our enemies were Communists. After 1978 we reviewed the objectives and priorities. We had now gained a social consciousness and the conflict with the Communists has become secondary, "says Ghannouchi, who was arrested in 1979 for the first time and placed in a special cell in the basement of the Ministry of the Interior. He was released after one month, say the ban on preaching in mosques in the country.
In 1981, when Bourguiba opened to multiparty politics, the organization is transformed into the Islamic Tendency Movement (MTI) and asks to be legalized. The MTI has never received official recognition of the regime, but has now spread throughout the country thanks to the imams in the mosques and students on college campuses. At the founding congress, the movement part of its manifesto as "the rejection of violence, respect for the multiparty system and the woman's right to participation in public life." Nevertheless, its agents become the prime targets of the government and the political police. The same Rachid Ghannouchi is arrested for the second time in July 1981 and sentenced to eleven years in prison. He served three and then was freed in 1984 following the outbreak of the "bread riots." In this time of intensified contacts between the MTI and the leftist opposition. Bourguiba's regime falters and its repression of dissidents is becoming more acute. 1987 was the toughest year for the followers of Ghannouchi, now the first opposition force in the country, the more violent for the Tunisian people. The old dictator declares open war on the Islamic movement and runs hundreds of arrests. Two bloody attacks on the cities of Sousse and Monastir. For the regime is responsible for the MTI, even if the leader has always denied involvement of his movement in those episodes. Rachid Ghannouchi back in prison but was pardoned after the coup that sanctions the removal of Bourguiba and the rise to power of Ben Ali.
The new regime initially seems willing to accept the participation of Islamists in politics, so the Islamic Tendency Movement changed its name to Annadha (the Tunisian law prohibits the formation of parties on religious, ed) and presents legislative elections of 1989. Ghannouchi's party, with the support of rural Tunisia, winning back the appointment with the ballot. Or at least that's the case, given that Ben Ali denounces fraud and falsify the election results, the support offered by a strong trade union opposition and the Communist Party. The dictator launches a campaign to discredit Annadha, spreading fear in the country of the "fundamentalist threat" to Islam and resumed the chase already known by the movement of Rachid Ghannouchi under Bourguiba. In 1991 the party was dissolved on charges of "subversion" and "attack the institutional foundations of the state". His party leader in exile in London, leading other took refuge in France, and end up hundreds of activists in the prisons of the regime.
Al suo arrivo all’aeroporto di Tunisi, accolto dagli Allahu Akhbar intonati dalla folla, il leader islamista ha dichiarato all’AFP che non si candiderà alle elezioni presidenziali previste per il prossimo giugno, confermando così quanto già affermato a Londra poche ore dopo la fuga del dittatore Ben Ali. “Non mi presenterò alle presidenziali – ha riferito Ghannouchi – così come non si presenterà nessun altro esponente di Annadha. Dopo venti anni di assenza, il mio partito non è pronto a gettarsi nell’arena politica. La priorità è ricostruire il movimento e riprendere l’attività all’interno della società tunisina”.
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