ALBAWABA - The Tunisian deputy public prosecutor of the anti-terrorist judicial division said Wednesday that four individuals have been sentenced to death and two to life in prison for the assassination of Tunisian opposition leader Chokri Belaid in 2013.
A total of 23 people had been in charged in connection with the murder of leftist Belaid. Sentences ranging from two to 120 years were handed down to other defendants, while five were acquitted, AFP reported.
Belaid, a left-wing politician, had been a harsh critic of the Islamist Ennahda party, claiming that it turned a blind eye to extremist attacks on secularists. On February 6, 2013, gunmen shot and killed him in his car.
Belaid's assassination shook the country and triggered enormous and violent riots during an already unstable period, just after the Arab Spring in 2011, when protests erupted first in Tunisia and then throughout the region, deposing several long-standing dictatorships.
Jihadists loyal to the Islamic State claimed Belaid's assassination, as well as that of Mohamed Brahmi, a left-wing opposition figure six months later.
In 2014, authorities announced that Kamel Gadhgadhi, the primary perpetrator in the Belaid case, had been murdered during an "anti-terrorist" operation.
Belaid and Brahmi were both outspoken critics of Ennahdha, the party that governed Tunisian politics with a parliamentary majority for ten years following the 2011 revolution.
Belaid's family and secularist lawmakers accused the leaders of the Ennahda Islamist party, which led the government, of being behind the assassination.
Ennahda strongly denies any involvement in the assassination.
"The details concluded by judicial circles clearly show evidence of Ennahda's innocence," Ennahda stated in a statement on Wednesday.
