Tunisia, Islamists attack the opposition -Le Figaro

The campaign for the upcoming elections in June 2013 Tunisia looks as if it will be rough, Le Figaro reports. On Saturday, while the main opposition party, Nidaa Tounes, met on the island of Djerba, hundreds of Islamist militants close to the  Ennhada government  invaded the hotel where the meeting was held. Nidaa Tounes met to mark the end of mourning for one of its executives after  forty days for Lotfi Naguedh,  a party official of Tataouine in the south.He was beaten to death, apparently by members of the same group which attacked the Djerba meeting the article says.

Under the banner of the National League for Protection of the Revolution (LNPR), the militia seeks to prevent the return to politics of former members of Ben Ali's regime. A category in which the LNPR clearly places Nidaa Tounes, whose leader, Beji Caid Essebsi, who was prime minister after the revolution, will cast a wide net - into the dissolved  RCD  with the exception of those that could be brought to justice.

With banners  reading "Out with the rot" LPNR members massed in front of the hotel Djerba. While they were besieged, executives and members of tNida Tounes called for help via SMS. A lawyer and human rights advocate, Bochra Hmid Belhaj, told AFP: "We contacted the Ministers of Interior and Human Rights, but they refuse to intervene." Outside the Police  also did not intervene,according to Le Figaro.

The LNPR is  divided into local committees, it  is not its first  violent attempt against Nida Tounes. In Tataouine, October 18, and showed his disciples responded violently to Molotov cocktails thrown by members of Nida Tounes seeking to repel them. Lotfi Naguedh that day became "the first martyr of the  political post-revolution," according Nidaa Tunes. On 4 December, in Tunis, outside the headquarters of the UGTT, the Tunisian main union, the LNPR attacked UGTT members , accusing the  UGTT central committee of acting for the opposition.The LNPR has frequently used violence to disrupt Nida Tounes party meetings.

Violent clashes, initiated by  the LNPR,  left several people injured in the ranks of the LNPR as among the supporters of the UGTT, which was  commemorating that day the sixtieth anniversary of the assassination of its first Secretary General, Farhat Hached. The union then threatened a national general strike in the hope of obtaining the dissolution of the LNPR. After hours of negotiations with the government, the opening of a commission of inquiry was promised by the government  and the threat of a strike was withdrawn.

Despite the violent acts with which it is associated, the various warnings that have been sent and the repeated requests of dissolution, the  LNPR violence regularly reoccurs.Many suspect the acquiesence of Ennahda, the  majority Islamist party  in power, which would explain the impunity it seems to enjoy, Le Figaro reports.

Former spokesman of an igroup, now dissolved, which was supposed to ensure the objectives of the revolution, Samir Rahbi  believes that  neighborhood committees created at the time of the fall of Ben Ali have no desire for the establishment of an elected government. "They are the armed wing of the ruling party,"  he said to Le Figaro. According to him, the League seeks primarily to destroy Nidaa Tounes, the main party now able to fight the next election  against Ennahda. "They provide action against former RCD members in general, but in the elections held last year, the candidates known to have consorted with Ben Ali were not worried. Since Nidaa Tounes represents a real threat to Ennahda, on the contrary, we see activists  in the LNPR acting against them. " Le Figaro concludes