Hassene Dridi /Associated Press
Tunisian women, dressed with the traditional islamic headscarf, listen to Hammadi Jebali, secretary general of Ennahda, Tunisia’s largest Islamic movement during a meeting in Tunis last month.
TUNIS — Accused as subversives or terrorists, they bore the repressive brunt of the Tunisian dictator’s reign — two decades of torture, prison or exile.
But since the dictator, President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, fled in January, the Islamists of the once-banned Ennahda Party have emerged from obscurity, returned from abroad and established themselves as perhaps the most powerful political force in post-revolution Tunisia.
