First judicial verdict eleven years after the assassination of Chokri Belaïd. Four people accused in the trial for the assassination of the Tunisian left-wing opponent in 2013 have been sentenced to death, a magistrate from the anti-terrorism judicial center announced on Wednesday March 27 on national television.
In total, 23 people were indicted for the assassination in his car and in front of his home on February 6, 2013 of this 48-year-old lawyer, a virulent critic of the Islamo-conservative Ennahda party, at the time in power in Tunisia.
Also rereadTunisia: five years after the assassination of opponent Chokri Belaïd, his family “wants the truth”
After 15 hours of deliberation and eleven years of investigations and legal proceedings, the Tunis court of first instance also sentenced two defendants to life in prison, Aymen Chtiba, deputy prosecutor general of the anti-terrorism judicial center, announced live.
Sentences of 2 to 120 years' imprisonment were also handed down for other defendants, while five individuals were acquitted even though they remain accused in other cases.
An assassination which was claimed by jihadists linked to ISIS
Although the Tunisian justice system continues to regularly hand down death sentences, particularly in terrorism cases, a de facto moratorium has been applied since 1991.
Jihadists allied with the Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the assassination of Chokri Belaïd as well as that, six months later, of MP Mohamed Brahmi, 58, another figure in the left-wing opposition.
The Tunisian authorities announced in February 2014 the death of Kamel Gadhgadhi, considered the main author of the assassination of Chokri Belaïd, during an anti-terrorist operation.
Chokri Belaïd and Mohamed Brahmi opposed the policies of Ennahda, a movement which dominated Parliament and the government for ten years after the Tunisian revolution in 2011, until a coup by current President Kaïs Saïed on the 25th. July 2021 by which he granted himself full powers.
These two assassinations shocked Tunisia and constituted a turning point for this country, cradle of the Arab Spring, then in the midst of a democratic transition, by causing a deep political crisis, at the end of which Ennahda had to cede power to a government of technocrats in 2014 .
With AFP
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