The son of jailed Tunisian opposition leader Rached Ghannouchi has said that his family and lawyers have been unable to see or contact the 85-year-old for 11 days since he was hospitalized after collapsing in prison.

In an interview with Al Jazeera on Monday, Moadh Ghannouchi said the last time lawyers saw his father was days before he temporarily lost consciousness on July 17, and that requests to visit him in hospital, including one submitted to the public prosecutor, had been refused, leaving the family with no confirmation of his whereabouts or condition.

“It is like a situation of enforced disappearance,” he said. Ghannouchi said his father, who has high blood pressure and difficulty breathing, had been left exposed to a severe heatwave in a prison with no air conditioning.

“We hold the authorities fully responsible for his condition,” he said, alleging that his father’s confinement in a stiflingly hot prison was intended to worsen his health. “It was not enough to imprison him – they want to torment him further,” Moadh told Al Jazeera.

Conflicting rumors have spread on social media, with some placing his father at the Rabta public hospital in Tunis, others at a military hospital, and some claiming he had suffered a heart attack. But the family has received no official information, with the authorities refusing to communicate.

Ghannouchi’s defense team demanded information on his condition, and an Ennahda party spokesperson said it did not know which hospital he is in or his state of health. Rached Ghannouchi has been jailed since April 2023 after receiving a life sentence that his supporters say was politically motivated. The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention previously found his detention arbitrary and called for his immediate release, a ruling his son said authorities ignored.

Source: www.aljazeera.com