PH
The deputy public prosecutor of the anti-terrorist judiciary division announced Wednesday that four persons were sentenced to death and two to life in prison for the 2013 assassination of Tunisian opposition leader Chokri Belaid.
A total of 23 persons had been charged in relation to the death of communist Belaid.
Sentences ranging from two to 120 years were handed down to other defendants, while five were acquitted.
On February 6, 2013, Belaid, a staunch critic of the then-ruling Islamist party Ennahdha, was assassinated in his automobile outside his home.
Despite a de facto moratorium imposed in 1991, Tunisia continues to condemn people to death, often for terrorism.
Jihadists loyal to the Islamic State claimed Belaid’s killing and that of Mohamed Brahmi, another left-wing opposition member, six months later.
Authorities said in 2014 that Kamel Gadhgadhi, the principal offender in the Belaid case, had been killed in an anti-terrorist operation.
Belaid and Brahmi were both outspoken critics of Ennahdha, the party that dominated Tunisian politics with a parliamentary majority for a decade after the 2011 revolution.
The party’s political clout was diminished in July 2021, when President Kais Saied attempted a massive power grab.
