Supporters of a slain Tunisian opposition politician will gather for his funeral today, after officials said he was gunned down with the same weapon used to kill a colleague, pointing at Al Qaeda links.
Already yesterday, one person was killed during anti-government demonstrations triggered by the assassination of Mohamed Brahmi a day earlier, and the Islamist regime was gearing up for another day of tension.
Brahmi's widow Mbarka told AFP he would be buried today at El Jallez cemetery in southern Tunis next to Chokri Belaid, the opposition politician assassinated in February.
Tens of thousands of people attended Belaid's funeral, when part of the procession turned into a protest against the ruling Islamist party Ennahda.
The families of both men have accused Ennahda of being implicated in the deaths, but the authorities said Friday that the investigation pointed to extremists.
Brahmi was killed with the same weapon used to gun down Belaid, Interior Minister Lotfi Ben Jeddou said.
"The first elements of the investigation show the implication of Boubaker Hakim, a Salafist extremist," said Jeddou.
Paris-born Hakim, 30, was a member of radical Sunni Muslim Salafist movement Ansar al-Sharia, which officials have previously linked to Al-Qaeda, he added.
Hakim was already wanted in Tunisia for kidnapping and arms trafficking, the minister said.
Public security chief Mustapha Taieb Ben Amor named 14 radical Islamist suspects -- including four behind bars -- implicated in the two political killings.
"The suspects are radical extremists, and some of them belong to Ansar al-Sharia," the main Salafist group in Tunisia, Ben Jeddou said.
Brahmi, 58, was gunned down outside his home in the Tunis suburb of Ariana by two gunmen.
He was an MP with the leftist and nationalist Popular Movement but quit the party he founded on July 7 saying it had been infiltrated by Islamists.
Today's funeral procession will start from the family home at 0900 GMT and travel 10 kilometres to the cemetery, his widow said.
The interior ministry said it would deploy reinforcements to provide security as the General Union of Tunisian Labour (UGTT) called for a national funeral.
The state prosecutor's office said an autopsy found that Brahmi had been hit by 14 bullets.
