Tunisian justice opened an investigation on Wednesday, as did the Instance for the Prevention of Torture (INPT), after the death of a fifty-year-old man, found unconscious during a demonstration violently repressed by the police on January 14, a learned AFP from concordant sources.
The Tunis court has launched an official investigation into “the death at Habib Thameur hospital” on Wednesday, of a man whom activists from the group “Citizens Against the Coup” identified as Ridha Bouzayane, 57, ” died of serious injuries due to police violence during the January 14 demonstration.
These opponents of President Kais Saied called the victim a “martyr”, as did activists from the Islamist-inspired Ennahdha party who were also taking part in the protests against Mr. Saied’s July 25 coup by which the president, including Ennahdha, is the pet peeve, has assumed full powers.
The INPT “self-seized” the file and opened its own “suspicious death investigation”, told AFP Lotfi Ezzedine, an official of this independent public authority.
According to a press release from the Tunis court, “a civil protection ambulance brought back on January 14 a person found unconscious near the Palais des Congrès” which borders Avenue Mohamed V where the majority of the demonstrators were concentrated.
An autopsy was ordered, the court said, adding that “according to initial findings, the man’s body showed no visible signs of violence”.
According to Samir Dilou, former deputy of Ennahdha, Mr. Bouzayane, a dentist father of three children, originally from Sousse, had gone to Tunis to take part in the “Feast of the Revolution”, marking the fall and flight of former dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in 2011.
The Ennahdha party denounced “a murder”, affirming that “he succumbed to a cerebral hemorrhage following the violence committed by the police”. According to Ennahdha, the authorities “hid from his family that he was in intensive care for five days”.
The party blamed the responsibility for this “crime” on President Saied, calling in a statement for the dismissal of Interior Minister Taoufik Charfeddine.
As of Saturday, around twenty Tunisian NGOs denounced the “police repression” of the January 14 gatherings, officially banned for health reasons.
In scenes of rare violence in Tunis for 10 years, the police charged with great reinforcements of water cannons and tear gas, and carried out dozens of forceful arrests of activists and journalists, some of whom were mistreated and struck.
