Tunisia’s parliament has approved a new anti-terrorism law in a bid to counter a growing wave of militancy in the African country, which saw two fatal terror attacks claimed by ISIL earlier this year. Both attacks were claimed by Islamic State.
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He is confident the law will offer new reassurances for the Tunisian citizens, who are now living in the shadow of a national tragedy: the massacre of 38 tourists killed by a masked gunman; ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack later on. A group of gunmen killed approximately 20 tourists back in March in the Bardo museum.
On Thursday, Tunisian security forces killed an Islamist militant and arrested 13 people in a security operation in the northern state of Bizerte, the interior ministry said.
On Saturday, the government announced that further raids had been carried out in the capital, the resort town of Sousse as well as in the southern city of Sfax.
In a late-night session Friday, 174 deputies voted for the legislation, 10 abstained and no one voted against it – a sign of the perceived urgency for the law after Tunisia was battered by devastating attacks on tourists in March and then again June.
“The political wrangling will affect religious rights and freedom of expression”, said Sahbi Atig, a member of the moderate Islamist Ennahda Party who feared it would affect the “achievements of the revolution”.
The new laws impose the death penalty as a possible sentence for a range of “terror” offences and will allow authorities to detain terror suspects for up to 15 days without access to a lawyer.
A study by the global Crisis Group, released as the law was being debated, contended that reforming the security services would be more effective than harsher penalties in combatting terrorism.
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“Millions of Tunisians have been grappling with the recent violence and … they say this is something that has to be addressed”, Al Jazeera’s Hashem Ahelbarra, reporting from the capital Tunis, said.
