Judgments Issued in Belaid Case After 11 Years of His Assassination
The Ennahdha Movement considers the sentences against the convicted individuals in the assassination operation as evidence of its innocence of planning the operation
A Tunisian court today, Wednesday, issued a death sentence against four individuals and life imprisonment against two others on charges of participating in the assassination of the prominent political opponent Chokri Belaid 11 years ago, which was the first political assassination witnessed by the country in decades, marking the closure of the file after revealing the truth as a new beginning in Tunisia to break with years of terrorism and political assassination.
Belaid, a leftist politician who was one of the harshest critics of the Islamic Ennahdha Party, accused the party of turning a blind eye to the violence committed by extremists against secularists. He was shot dead in his car by gunmen on February 6, 2013.
Dozens of supporters of the prominent opposition figure have gathered near the courthouse in the Tunisian capital since yesterday evening, holding banners demanding justice. They chanted slogans such as “Chokri is always alive” and “loyal to the martyrs’ blood”.
Although Belaid had only a small political base at the time, his strong criticisms of Ennahdha’s policies resonated with many Tunisians who feared that Islamists were determined to suppress the freedoms and gains they had achieved in the first of the revolutions that swept the Arab world at the time.
The family of the opposition figure and secular politicians accused leaders of the Islamic Ennahdha Party of being behind the assassination when the party was leading the government. Ennahdha has vehemently denied any connection to the assassination and says that the accusations are politically motivated.
Following the verdicts, Ennahdha said in a statement early Wednesday, “What the security agencies have reached… and what the judicial circles have concluded in terms of details, undoubtedly constitute evidence of Ennahdha’s innocence and definitive evidence of the suspicious agenda of the so-called Defense Committee.”
It added that it believes that the issuance of the judgments should put an end to the trade in the martyr’s blood and restore the reputation of those falsely accused of political charges, especially the head of the movement, Rached Ghannouchi. In its statement, it called for “opening a page of major reconciliations and rejecting voices that incite strife, exclusion, and hatred.”
Journalists waited for hours outside the courthouse awaiting the verdicts amid direct coverage from private and public media outlets, including the official television.
A few months after Belaid‘s assassination, Mohamed Brahmi, another leftist, was also killed by armed gunmen in front of his house. Following that, massive protests and strong political pressure forced the government led by Islamists to step down at the time.
The defendants in the Belaid and Brahmi assassinations belong to the jihadist Salafist Ansar al-Sharia organization, which was classified as a terrorist organization by the government in 2013.
Tunisian President Kais Saied had pledged to expedite the handling of political assassination files after taking exceptional measures on July 25, which helped liberate the judiciary from political pressures. The recent verdicts reveal the extent of terrorism’s infiltration into Tunisia after the revolution and the efforts made at the security, judicial, and legal levels to confront and uncover the political entities that protect it.
