Highlights: Tunisia: justice sentences four defendants to death in the murder of opponent Chokri Belaïd. After eleven years of investigation and legal proceedings, Tunisian justice sentenced four defendants on Wednesday March 27. 23 people were charged with the shooting death of Chokrri BelAïd on February 6, 2013, shot dead in front of his home at the age of 48. Death penalty, although not abolished in Tunisia, has been the subject of a moratorium since 1991.

Tunisia: justice sentences four defendants to death in the murder of opponent Chokri Belaïd

This is an assassination which horrified and shocked Tunisia: the murder of Chokri Belaïd, lawyer, opposition figure and left-wing activist, on February 6, 2013. After eleven years of investigation and legal proceedings, Tunisian justice sentenced four defendants to death in this case on Wednesday March 27.

Chokri Belaïd, lawyer and Tunisian opposition figure, at the end of 2012 in Tunis, a few months before his death on February 6, 2013. © AFP / KHALIL

By: RFI with AFP

Tunisia

, 23 people were charged with the shooting death of Chokri Belaïd on February 6, 2013, shot dead in front of his home at the age of 48. Four of them are now sentenced to death, reports our correspondent in Tunis,

Amira Souilem

The death of Belaïd, a well-spoken left-wing activist, founder of the so-called Democratic Patriots movement, and virulent opponent of the Islamists

of Ennahdha,

had plunged post-revolutionary Tunisia into stupor and into a political crisis whose ripples are still being felt. feel today.

Eleven years after his death, followed by that of another of his

fellow fighters, Mohamed Brahmi

, in similar conditions, the verdict is therefore in. After 15 hours of deliberation and 11 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.

Moratorium applied on the death penalty

Note that the death penalty, although not abolished in Tunisia, has been the subject of a moratorium since 1991. No person has been executed since in the country but the current president

Kaïs Saïed

- former legal assistant - has not has never hidden being in favor of his effective recovery. He has also made the trial of the assassins of Chokri Belaïd and Mohamed Brahmi one of his priorities.

He also highlighted the

slowness in solving these murders

as proof of justice, according to him, which was corrupt. Dozens of magistrates were then dismissed after he took full powers in 2021. Some of them complicit in obstructing the investigation in the eyes of the Tunisian president.

Proof of the importance that the current regime gives to this case: the verdict was announced live on Tunisian national television. A channel that has become, since Kaïs Saïed's coup, an official information channel from which dissident voices have gradually disappeared.

Read alsoTunisia: a journalist critical of President Saied placed in police custody

Tunisia: justice sentences four defendants to death in the murder of opponent Chokri Belaïd

Tunisia: justice sentences four defendants to death in the murder of opponent Chokri Belaïd

Moratorium applied on the death penalty

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