Tunisia Punishing the Pious

By Michael S. Serrill

The defendants, all Islamic fundamentalists, stood as still as wax figures in the Tunis courtroom while Judge Hachemi Zammel forcefully read out each verdict and sentence. Their trademark beards had been shaved off when they were jailed in a series of roundups earlier this year, but their piety remained intact. When the judge completed his task, the prisoners broke into refrains of "Allahu Akbar" (God is great). Seven were sentenced to death, 69 to jail terms, and 14 were acquitted. Thirty-seven of the accused, including five of those marked for execution, were still in hiding and were tried in absentia.

The sentences seemed stiff by Western standards. But in Tunisia there was general relief at the court's relative leniency. The prosecutor had asked for the death penalty for all 90 defendants, which would have provided the , fundamentalists with a large crop of martyrs and further energized their attacks on the government. The militants were charged with trying to overthrow the secular, pro-Western regime of President Habib Bourguiba and install an Iranian-style Islamic republic. Some of the seven sentenced to hang were implicated in the August bombings of four tourist hotels, in which twelve foreigners were hurt.

"The irreparable has been avoided," said Ahmed Mestiri, an opposition leader and former Defense Minister. "The execution of the leaders of the Islamic movement would have created a very grave situation." Tunisian moderates were especially relieved that the court had spared the life of Rachid Ghannouchi, 47, head of the Islamic Tendency Movement, the group that has spearheaded fundamentalist agitation. He was instead sentenced to "forced labor in perpetuity."

The trial was the latest episode in a long-running battle between the fundamentalists and the government, which this year launched a major crackdown against the militants. Since last spring, authorities have arrested more than 2,000 fundamentalists, who are suspected of being part of a plot by Iran to spread its revolution. Bourguiba cut off relations with Tehran last March after six Tunisians were arrested in Paris and charged with being part of an Iranian-run terrorist organization. Islamic Jihad, the pro-Iran terror group that is based in Beirut, claimed responsibility for the August hotel bombings in Tunisia. After last week's verdicts, Islamic Jihad declared that it would kill top Tunisian officials if any of the death sentences were carried out. The group indicated its bona fides by releasing to a Western news agency a photo of longtime American Hostage Terry Anderson.

But critics say that Bourguiba, 84, who has ruled the small North African nation (pop. 7.6 million) since it gained independence from France in 1956, regularly conjures up foreign plots in order to justify suppression of dissent. Despite his age and frail health, Bourguiba's hold on power is virtually absolute: his Destourian Socialist Party holds every seat in parliament, most opposition newspapers have been shut down, and competing political parties are restricted.

Last week Bourguiba ensured that the pressure on dissenters will continue when he abruptly sacked his Prime Minister and replaced him with Interior Minister Zine al Abidine ben Ali, who has led the crackdown on the fundamentalists. "You will not see any steps toward greater pluralism now," / commented one worried Western diplomat. Indeed, Bourguiba has knocked out his opposition so effectively that many fear there is now no credible successor, and that when he dies the radical fundamentalists will leap to fill the political void.

With reporting by Scott MacLeod/Tunis