Tunisian authorities arrested 33 members of toppled president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali’s family as protesters rallied again yesterday to demand that the dictator’s former ruling party be rooted out.
The arrests were announced on state television, which showed footage of luxury watches, jewelry and credit cards seized in raids on homes of the former first family.
Authorities had opened an investigation against them for plundering the nation’s resources, it said.
The mass arrest of Ben Ali’s relatives showed how his influence has melted away since he dramatically fled to Saudi Arabia on Friday last week, following weeks of riots in the north African nation.
Charges of corruption and revelations of the Ben Ali family’s lavish lifestyle helped fuel the anger of the protests against his 23-year rule that culminated in his toppling.
About 1,000 people protested in Tunis city center against Ben Ali’s Constitutional Democratic Rally (RCD) in a new wave of anger about the presence of RCD stalwarts in the transitional government unveiled on Monday and as the new Cabinet prepared for its first meeting of the post-Ben Ali era later yesterday, a minister from the RCD, Zouheir M’dhaffer, announced he had pulled out of the government.
M’dhaffer, who had been administrative development minister, said he resigned “to preserve the supreme interests of the nation and in favor of the democratic transformation of the country.”
Four other ministers — three unionists and an opposition leader — pulled out on Tuesday because of the presence of officials from the party of the former regime.
Eight new ministers who had been RCD members quit the party earlier yesterday, while the interim president vowed a “total break” with the past.
“The people want the government to be fired,” shouted protesters outside the RCD party offices, carrying placards that read: “We are not afraid of you any more, traitors” and “RCD out.”
Troops fired warning shots to prevent some protesters from scaling a wall.
Ahead of the inaugural meeting of the new Cabinet, interim president Foued Mebazaa hailed “a revolution of dignity and liberty” and paid tribute to the “martyrs,” who were shot dead in the attempt to keep a lid on the protests.
Mebazaa said the government’s top priority would be to draw up an amnesty law for the release of all political prisoners imprisoned under Ben Ali, and he vowed to ensure media freedoms and an independent judiciary.
“Together, we can write a new page in the history of our country,” he said in a televised address late on Wednesday.
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