Police lock doors of Tunisia's dissolved Supreme Judicial Council

Tunisian police locked the doors of the Supreme Judicial Council and stopped staff from entering the building, the council’s head confirmed on Monday, after President Kais Saied said he would dissolve the body that oversees his country's judicial independence.

AFP journalists saw security forces blocking all roads to the Supreme Judicial Council (CSM) headquarters in Tunis.

“We don't know who issued these orders but we know that they have no legal basis,” CSM president Youssef Bouzakher told AFP.

Mr Saied's announcement, which came after midnight on Saturday, further consolidates power around him after he took sole control of the country last July.

During a surprise visit to Tunisia’s Interior Ministry on Saturday night, Mr Saied accused some judges and magistrates of “corruption … nepotism … and stalling proceedings in several cases, including those of political assassinations”.

“The Superior Council of the Judiciary can from now on consider itself a thing of the past,” the president said. A decree to set up a provisional council would be issued soon, he said.

The body, created in 2016, consists of 45 magistrates with the power to appoint judges.

His decision caps months of criticism of the judiciary, which he has previously accused of conspiring against the country by delaying rulings in corruption and terrorism cases, including those of two political assassinations in 2013.

The president has repeatedly said he will not allow judges to act as if they are a state, instead of being a function of the state.

Last month, police fired water cannon and beat protesters with sticks to break up an opposition protest against the president, whose seizure of broad powers and declared plans to redraw the constitution have cast doubt on Tunisia's decade-old democratic system, and hindered its quest for an international rescue plan for public finances.