Tunisia’s interim government yesterday asked Saudi Arabia to extradite deposed strongman Zine El Abidine Ben Ali as it faced a second day of protests demanding its resignation.
Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi’s government made the official request to Riyadh, where Mr Ben Ali fled on January 14 with his family after weeks of popular revolt against his 23-year regime, said a foreign ministry statement cited by state news agency TAP.
The government acted “following a new batch of charges against the ousted president regarding his involvement in several serious crimes aimed at perpetrating and inciting voluntary homicide and sowing discord between the citizens of the same country by pushing them to kill one another,” it said.
The caretaker government also asked Saudi Arabia for information about Mr Ben Ali’s health following reports this week that he had fallen into a stress-induced coma and was being treated in a hospital in Jeddah.
Two days ago Tunisian officials spurned the reports, saying Mr Ben Ali’s health was “not the government’s business.” Yesterday’s about-face came as Mr Ghannouchi faced fresh demonstrations, including a protest by around 4,000 people in central Tunis, demanding his resignation.In yesterday’s rally many protesters waved Tunisian flags and banners proclaiming: “Resignation of the prime minister, Constituent Assembly, Parliamentary System” or “Tunisia is ours and not of others. No to French interference.”
“We are against Mr Ghannouchi’s government because our revolution has led to nothing with Ghannouchi. This is Ben Ali’s team and it has changed nothing,” said teacher Samia Mahfoudh, 50. “It’s a bluff.”
Mr Ghannouchi was prime minister under deposed president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali from 1999 until he was ousted in a popular revolt on January 14.
On January 17, he took the reins of a transitional government of national unity, which included many ministers who were part of the old regime.
The authorities have appointed a panel to prepare free elections due in six months while several opposition parties have demanded the election of a constituent assembly to write a new constitution.
The government also announced on Friday a first set of urgent social measures and ordered reservists to join the army on Wednesday to fill a security vacuum.
But protester Sami Ben Moumen was unfazed: “They are taking us for fools.”“All members of the government and regional councils have been elected by the former regime, the constitution has been reformed by the former regime. The RCD wants to sow terror,” he said, referring to the banned former ruling party.
Saturday, hundreds of Tunisians marched to demand a secular state following the murder of a Polish priest, verbal attacks on Jews and an attempt by Islamists to set fire to a brothel.
The murder of 34-year-old priest Marek Rybinski, found dead last Friday with his throat slit in the garage of a private religious school at Manouba near the capital, was the first of a foreigner or priest since Mr Ben Ali was toppled.
Mr Ghannouchi has promised to shed light as soon as possible on the circumstances surrounding the priest’s death, Tunisia’s bishop Lahham Maroun said after a meeting with the premier yesterday.
On the day his body was found, hundreds of Islamists had rallied in Tunis calling for the closure of brothels in the city. A march on a street housing one of the best-known brothels was thwarted by police.
And anti-Jewish slogans were shouted outside the main Tunis synagogue earlier this month.