3/27/2024-|Last update: 3/27/202410:19 AM (Mecca time)
A Tunisian court on Wednesday sentenced four people to death and two others to life imprisonment on charges of participating in the assassination of Tunisian leftist politician Chokri Belaid 11 years ago, which was the first political assassination the country had witnessed in decades.
Assistant Public Prosecutor at the Court of First Instance, Ayman Shatiba, said that the court convicted 23 people in the Belaid assassination case, and issued prison sentences ranging from two to 120 years against other defendants, while acquitting 5 people.
Chokri Belaid was assassinated on February 6, 2013, in front of his house with 4 bullets, in Ariana Province, in the Tunisian capital.
His assassination plunged Tunisia into a political crisis that resulted in the resignation of Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali.
“The ruling is evidence of Ennahdha’s innocence.”
Shortly after the ruling was issued in the Belaid assassination case, the Ennahdha movement issued a statement in which it said that the ruling was evidence of the movement’s innocence in the case of his assassination.
The movement said, “The findings of the security services with all their specializations and the details concluded by the judicial departments are certain evidence of the Ennahdha Movement’s innocence and conclusive evidence of the suspicious agenda of the so-called Defense Force, which is to target a political party unjustly, aggressively, lying, and slanderously.”
The movement’s statement said: “Hostile and biased parties insisted on holding the Ennahda Movement responsible for this sinful political assassination, staining its path and image with the color of blood, and exploiting any occasion to repeat the cycle of false accusations so that the wound remains bleeding and the stigma remains entrenched, a cover-up for the inability to engage in intellectual confrontation and political competition within a democratic and civilized framework.” Salim”.
In its statement, Ennahdha called for opening the page of major reconciliations and turning away from voices “that call for strife, exclusion, and hatred.”
She said that the issuance of rulings in the assassination case “should end the trading in the blood of the martyr Belaid and restore the dignity of those who were subjected to false and deadly political accusations, especially the leader of the movement, Rached Ghannouchi.”
Parties accused the Ennahda Movement of involvement in the Belaid assassination, and the movement denied these accusations completely and in detail.
Extremist Salafists were also accused of his assassination, especially the “Ansar al-Sharia” organization, which rejected the accusation and blamed what it described at the time as the remnants of the intelligence services of the ousted President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
The organization said at the time that the “political police” assassinated Belaid “to plunge the country into a state of chaos and strife, so that accountability would not occur and dangerous files would not be opened.”
The Tunisian Prime Minister announced on July 24, 2013 that the competent security authorities were able to uncover those involved in the assassination of Chokri Belaid, and confirmed on August 4, 2013 that they had arrested one of the accused in the city of Hammam-Sousse.
Belaid is a Tunisian lawyer and politician. He opposed the regime of Bourguiba and Ben Ali. After the 2011 revolution, he became a member of the High Commission to Achieve the Goals of the Revolution, Political Reform, and Democratic Transition. He then opposed the performance of the coalition government led by the Ennahdha movement.
