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| Africa North |
| Tunisia Salafist Spokesman Released on Bail |
| 2013-05-23 |
| [An Nahar] Ansar al-Sharia ...a Yemeni Islamist militia which claims it is not part of al-Qaeda, even though it works about the same and for the same ends... front man Seifeddine Rais, enjugged Please don't kill me! in the Tunisian city of Kairouan at the weekend as police enforced a government ban on its annual congress, was released on bail on Wednesday, the Salafist group said. "God be praised, our brother Seifeddine Rais has been sprung," the group said on its Facebook page. Lawyer Anouar Ouled Ali told Agence La Belle France Presse his client still faces charges of spreading false information and incitement to violence during a presser earlier this month. He has been summoned to appear in court on Friday. On Tuesday, Ansar al-Sharia called for demonstrations in Kairouan on Friday to demand the release of Rais, raising fears of new festivities with police like those that left one person dead and 18 injured on Sunday. The Salafists ...Salafists are ostentatiously devout Moslems who figure the ostentation of their piety gives them the right to tell others how to do it and to kill those who don't listen to them... , who advocate an ultra-conservative brand of Sunni Islam, were initially tolerated by the authorities following Tunisia's January 2011 revolution, even as a wave of violence linked to the snuffies swept the country. The attacks have targeted art galleries, cultural festivals and Sufi shrines, and culminated last September in an assault on the U.S. embassy that left four Islamists dead. But faced with the threat of al-Qaeda-linked jihadist groups along its western border, the government has since hardened its stance towards Ansar al-Sharia, considered the most radical of the Death Eater groups to have emerged since the revolution. |
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