Opposition in Tunisia Finds Chance for Rebirth
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
Published: January 20, 2011
TUNIS — Ali Larayedh was imprisoned and tortured for 14 years for his role as a leader of the outlawed Islamist movement here, then hounded for the past six years by the omnipresent Tunisian secret police.
Holly Pickett for The New York Times
Ali Larayedh says his once-outlawed party, Al-Nahda, ascribes to a uniquely liberal version of Islamist politics.
Holly Pickett for The New York Times
Soldiers blocked demonstrators on Thursday in Tunis outside the headquarters of the ousted dictator’s party.
But six days after the ouster of this country’s dictator, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, Mr. Larayedh now basks in a singular celebrity. He is one of the few remaining leaders of the only credible opposition movement in Tunisia’s history. And in the aftermath of Mr. Ben Ali’s flight, that movement’s potential reincarnation is perhaps the most significant variable in Tunisia’s post-revolutionary future — yearned for by legions of working-class and rural Tunisians, viewed with just as much apprehension by the cosmopolitan coastal elite.
In an interview in the lobby of the Africa Hotel here, Mr. Larayedh insisted that his party posed no threat to Tunisians or to tourists sipping French wine in their bikinis along the Mediterranean beaches. READ ON: www.nytimes.com/2011/01/21/world/africa/21islamist.html
