TUNISIAN PARLIAMENTARY MEMBER SHOT DEAD

Ariana, 18 Ramadan 1434/26 July 2013 (MINA) – leading critic of Tunisia’s ruling party, MP Mohamed Brahmi, was shot dead outside his home Thursday in the second such assassination this year.

The murder by unknown gunmen sparked angry street protests in central Tunis and the top opposition figure’s birthplace of Sidi Bouzid where he served as MP, AFP correspondents said.

“Mohamed Brahmi, general coordinator of the Popular Movement and member of the National Constituent Assembly, was shot dead outside his home in Ariana,” near Tunis, Watanya state television and the official TAP news agency reported.

“He was riddled with bullets in front of his wife and children,” Mohsen Nabti, a fellow member of the small leftist movement, said in a tearful account aired on Tunisian radio.

The interior ministry, cited by TAP, said that Brahmi, a 58-year-old MP and vocal critic of Tunisia’s government, was assassinated as he left home.

Watanya said Brahmi was struck by a hail of 11 bullets fired from point-blank range.

The February 6 assassination of Chokri Belaid, another opposition figure, in front of his home sparked a political crisis in Tunisia and charges of government connivance.

Ennahda chief Rached Ghannouchi in a statement said Brahmi’s killing “a catastrophe for Tunisia”.

“Those behind this crime want to lead the country towards civil war and to disrupt the democratic transition,” he said.

Brahmi, a man with a bushy moustache and weather-beaten complexion, was elected MP for Sidi Bouzid in October 2011, birthplace of the revolution earlier that year that ousted president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.(T/P03/P04)

Mi’raj News Agency (MINA)