by Robert Fisk, The Independent
Blood spattered on Tunisia’s supposedly gentle “Jasmine Revolution” yesterday when Shokri Belaid became its most important martyr, shot down outside his home in Tunis and pronounced dead with four bullets in his body, fired – by who?
A leading member of the opposition Popular Front coalition, he was not short of enemies; Belaid had been threatened countless times and a meeting he addressed at the weekend had been broken up by unidentified gangs. He had often accused Rachid Ghannouchi’s Ennahda party, which leads the Islamist-style government, of inciting violence.
The crowds which poured into the streets as Belaid’s body was brought by ambulance screamed out what has become the staple demand of all Arab revolutions – “the people want the fall of the regime” – but this time they were talking about Ghannouchi and his comrades rather than dictator Zin El Abdine Ben Ali who fled the country two years ago.
A familiar story
Rachid Ghannouchi himself called the murder “an ignoble crime” and said that Ennahda was “completely innocent of the assassination of Belaid”. Those behind the killing, he claimed, were “parties whose interests are threatened by the revolution and the democratic transition”. Ghannouchi spent 20 years in political exile, mostly in London, and has frequently suggested that survivors of Ben Ali’s elite super-class are plotting the overthrow of a new and democratic Tunisia.