Friday, July 26, 2013

Tunisia: Opposition leader gunned down by al-Qaeda, second in six months

An update to yesterday's report.
Tunis: Protests and a general strike swept Tunisia Friday after gunmen killed an opposition head with "the same gun" used to kill a colleague, as under-fire authorities pointed to Al-Qaeda links.

Mohamed Brahmi was gunned down with the same weapon used to kill another opposition politician, Chokri Belaid, six months earlier, Interior Minister Lotfi Ben Jeddou said.

He said the main suspect in Brahmi's killing was a member of the radical Sunni Muslim Salafist movement linked to Al-Qaeda. [...]

The 30-year-old Paris-born suspect was already wanted in Tunisia for kidnapping and arms trafficking, the minister said. [...]

"The suspects are radical extremists, and some of them belong to Ansar al-Sharia," the main Salafist group in Tunisia, he said.