TUNIS: Tunisians yesterday marked 12 turbulent months since opposition politician Chokri Belaid was assassinated, with his family still demanding to know what happened despite the alleged assassin being killed this week.
The charismatic leftist and virulent critic of the Islamist party Ennahda, then in power, was gunned down outside his Tunis home on February 6, 2013.
Belaid’s death triggered massive anti-government protests and a political crisis from which Tunisia has only now started to emerge, with the adoption of a consensus constitution in January.
Some 200 people gathered at the site where he was murdered to commemorate the anniversary.
A large poster asked the question troubling many Tunisians, despite an announcement this week that Kamel Gadhgadhi, his alleged assassin, had died in a police shoot-out.
Later, several hundred people attended a candlelit vigil and a concert on Habib Bourguiba Avenue in central Tunis, with stalls selling badges and pictures of the politician.
The authorities have blamed his death on Ansar Al Sharia, a Salafist group suspected of links to Al Qaeda, which has since been designated a terrorist organisation but which says it rejects violence.
On Tuesday, Interior Minister Lotfi Ben Jeddou said Gadhgadhi was among seven suspects killed during the seige of a house in the Raoued district of the capital.
But the family of the murdered politician, who at the time blamed his death on the Ennahda party, have spurned the Islamist minister’s comments.
“The truth has not been revealed,” Belaid’s widow Basma Khalfaoui said at yesterday’s commemoration.
“We want to know the whole truth. Gadhgadhi was not alone. There are other parties implicated and we hope they will be captured so that the truth is revealed,” Belaid’s brother, Abdelmajid, had said earlier.
AFP
