This article is from the source 'nytimes' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/26/world/middleeast/second-opposition-leader-killed-in-tunisia.html

The article has changed 6 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 3 Version 4
Second Opposition Leader Assassinated in Tunisia Second Opposition Leader Assassinated in Tunisia
(about 7 hours later)
TUNIS — Tunisia, birthplace of the Arab Spring revolutionary movement, was plunged into a new political crisis on Thursday when assassins shot an opposition party leader outside his home in a hail of gunfire. TUNIS — With a brazen hail of bullets, gunmen assassinated a prominent opposition leader on Thursday as his family watched, inciting nationwide outrage and exposing a deepening political divide in Tunisia, the last bastion of relative stability among the Arab countries convulsed by revolutionary upheavals over the past two years.
It was the second political assassination in Tunisia since February, and quickly incited protests blaming Ennahda, the moderate Islamist party that leads the government. Crowds of protesters gathered outside the offices of the Interior Ministry in Tunis, the capital, calling on Ennahda to relinquish power, and security forces were deployed to contain them. The assassination of the opposition leader, Mohamed Brahmi, was the second time in five months that a leading liberal politician was fatally shot. Many suspected that Islamist extremists were responsible and warned that they threatened the kind of pluralistic democracy envisioned in Tunisia’s 2011 uprising, which inspired the Arab Spring revolutions.
The Associated Press reported that protests had erupted in other cities, including Sidi Bouzid, the impoverished town where the Tunisian revolution began, and in the nearby town of Meknassi, where angry demonstrators burned down the local Ennahda headquarters. Hundreds of demonstrators gathered in front of the Interior Ministry building, blaming the ruling Islamist party and its followers for Mr. Brahmi’s killing and shouting for the government to go. Scores of relatives, party members and supporters draped in the Tunisian flag arrived at the entrance of the hospital in the southwestern suburb where Mr. Brahmi’s body lay.
Ennahda issued a statement calling the assassination “cowardly and despicable.” The leader of Ennahda, Rachid al-Ghannouchi, said on Tunisian radio: “This is a crime against the democratic transition of Tunisia. The classic question is, Who is behind this? I don’t think that any political party would want this.” Tunisian news media accounts said Mr. Brahmi, 58, had been shot outside his home, an attack witnessed by his wife and children, in the middle of the day by two men on a motorcycle who escaped. Although the accounts of the precise version of events differed, the audacity of the assassination amplified the outrage, as many Tunisians feel the government has failed to deliver on law and order and allowed radical Islamists a license to act with impunity.
TAP, Tunisia’s official news agency, said the victim, Mohamed Brahmi, 58, leader of the Arab nationalist People’s Party, was felled by several bullets outside his residence in Ariana, a suburb of Tunis. Other local Tunisian media said a pair of gunmen had shot Mr. Brahmi at least 11 times as he sat in a car with his daughter and that the killers escaped on a moped. Mr. Brahmi’s daughter told the Mosaique FM radio station that her father had received a call on his cellphone, ran outside the house toward his car and was shot.
At a hospital where Mr. Brahmi’s body was taken, dozens of protesters gathered to denounce Ennahda. “Ghannouchi is an assassin!” said a woman draped in a Tunisian flag. Others shouted, “The Islamists are vampires!” Ennahda, the moderate Islamist party that leads the government, denied responsibility and condemned the assassination as a plot to derail Tunisia’s democratic transition.
Noomen Toumi, one of the protesters at the hospital, said he believed Islamist extremists might have been behind the assassination of Mr. Brahmi. “It has to be someone who is against democracy,” he said. The assassination has hit Tunisia at a moment of growing political tension. Two years after the revolution that ended the dictatorship of President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali and empowered Ennahda in parliamentary elections, opposition to the Islamists has been building. Leftist and democratic parties have accused it of inefficiency and of prolonging its mandate illegally.
The assassination, which coincided with celebrations for the 56th anniversary of Tunisian statehood after independence from France, came as Tunisia was still grappling with a democratic transition following the January 2011 revolution that toppled the country’s autocratic leader, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, and forced him into exile. The Tunisian revolution was the catalyst that spawned similar uprisings in Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Syria. Invigorated by events that overthrew the Islamist government in Egypt three weeks ago, they have increasingly demanded the government resign and set a date for elections. Youth groups, including a Tunisian version of Egypt’s Tamarrod, or Rebellion, which was instrumental in the ouster of Egypt’s Islamist president, Mohamed Morsi, have begun organizing. The trade union movement, which played a large role in the revolution, called for a general strike on Friday in protest of the killing.
The new crisis in Tunisia came as uncertainty has been intensifying about the political future of Egypt, where three weeks ago the military deposed Mohamed Morsi, an Islamist who was the country’s first freely elected president. Like their counterparts in Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, Ennahda members had little experience running a country. The party was banned under the former government, and its members spent years in prison or exile. Ennahda leads a coalition with two smaller secular parties and has struggled to complete the drafting of a new Constitution and prepare elections within the allotted one year.
The past two years have been anything but smooth in Tunisia, whose economy remains in deep crisis and where clashes between secularists and devout Islamists have been a recurrent theme. Ennahda has been widely criticized for failing to crack down on Islamist extremists who have been emboldened since the revolution. The party has nevertheless been commended for its inclusive politics and a postrevolutionary maturity missing not only in Egypt but also in the other Arab Spring upheavals in Libya, Syria and Yemen. Ennahda negotiated a compromise on the Constitution, dropping all mention of Islamic law, for example, and ensuring full freedoms, including equal rights for women, freedom of religion and expression.
Extremists also were blamed for the assassination of Chokri Belaid, another opposition leader, five months ago, which incited protests that led to government resignations. At the same time, Ennahda has disappointed its own supporters and angered the more extreme among them.
The top human rights official at the United Nations, Navi Pillay, expressed shock at the killing of Mr. Brahmi and urged “the authorities to immediately launch a prompt and transparent investigation to ensure that the people who carried out this crime are held accountable.” The overthrow of the Islamist-dominated government in Egypt gave the government here a new sense of urgency. Members of the National Constituent Assembly have been meeting daily throughout the holy month of Ramadan to agree on a final draft of the Constitution and are close to approving a new board to run elections.
In what was clearly a criticism of the government, Ms. Pillay, the high commissioner for human rights, noted in a statement from her Geneva headquarters that the circumstances surrounding Mr. Belaid’s assassination had still not been established. Yet the most serious challenge for Ennahda has been controlling the extremists among its followers.
“The Tunisian authorities must take very serious measure to investigate these assassinations, identify the culprits and bring them to justice,” she said. “It is also crucial that they offer better protection to people who, like Mr. Brahmi, are clearly at risk.” Ennahda has long been criticized for allowing what the opposition calls a growing Islamization of the country, and a tolerance of extremist groups: Salafis and jihadis who were recruiting young men to fight in Syria, and groups preaching fundamentalist views and threatening women who worked outside the home or went unveiled.

Carlotta Gall reported from Tunis, and Rick Gladstone from New York. Nick Cumming-Bruce contributed reporting from Geneva.

Ennahda members, including ministers and the party leader, Rachid al-Ghannouchi, have played down signs of violent extremism and encouraged supporters to engage in the democratic process. Yet among those followers were thousands of men with guerrilla experience, whether in Afghanistan with the Taliban and Al Qaeda, or in neighbors such as Algeria.
Days after the attack in September 2012 on the United States diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, that killed the ambassador there, J. Christopher Stevens, a crowd attacked the United States Embassy in Tunis, burning more than 100 vehicles and looting the adjacent American school. Abu Ayad, a Tunisian leader of the Salafi group Ansar al-Shariah, is sought in connection with leading the attack. As the government detained 180 of his followers, the group threatened bombings in the cafes and streets of Tunis.
The embassy attack was followed in February by the assassination of a liberal politician, Chokri Belaid, outside his home. That killing set off a strong public backlash against the government. The prime minister resigned, and Ennahda reshuffled the cabinet, appointing a new interior minister who led a crackdown against criminal groups. In May the government moved against Ansar al-Sharia, banning its annual gathering and suppressing riots in a Tunis suburb. Ennahda members, despite internal sympathy for some of the extremists, condemned the rioting. Even Ennahda’s critics acknowledged that the government was showing greater maturity.
Voices on both sides of the political divide by Thursday evening were showing a determination not to let the assassination divert the democratic process. Mr. Ghannouchi called the assassination an attack on Tunisia.
“This is a crime against the democratic transition,” he said. Ennahda called on all parties to show “responsibility and restraint at this sensitive time.”
“It is not those in power doing this, but those who want to take us back, who have an interest in taking us to total disorder, even to civil war,” said Kamoun Lotfi, a teacher standing vigil at the hospital where Mr. Brahmi’s body lay.
Mooman Fehri, a member of the opposition party Al Jomhouri and a friend of Mr. Brahmi’s, said he believed the attack had been aimed at stopping the vote on the election board, which is close to completion. The board would be a powerful and legitimate body, and some opponents did not want it to go through, he suggested.
Middle East scholars said Mr. Brahmi’s assassination now threatened to harden the views of Ennahda’s critics and Islamists who contend that Islamism and democracy are incompatible.
“The danger of this is that it’s an attack on democratic institutions,” said George R. Trumbull IV, a history professor at Dartmouth College. “It has a potential to divide Tunisia into purely secular and purely Islamist poles and to further alienate Islamist supporters committed, at the moment, to the democratic process.”

Rick Gladstone contributed reporting from New York.