Word: bourguiba
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...leniency. The prosecutor had asked for the death penalty for all 90 defendants, which would have provided the , fundamentalists with a large crop of martyrs and further energized their attacks on the government. The militants were charged with trying to overthrow the secular, pro-Western regime of President Habib Bourguiba and install an Iranian-style Islamic republic. Some of the seven sentenced to hang were implicated in the August bombings of four tourist hotels, in which twelve foreigners were hurt...
...latest episode in a long-running battle between the fundamentalists and the government, which this year launched a major crackdown against the militants. Since last spring, authorities have arrested more than 2,000 fundamentalists, who are suspected of being part of a plot by Iran to spread its revolution. Bourguiba cut off relations with Tehran last March after six Tunisians were arrested in Paris and charged with being part of an Iranian-run terrorist organization. Islamic Jihad, the pro-Iran terror group that is based in Beirut, claimed responsibility for the August hotel bombings in Tunisia. After last week...
...critics say that Bourguiba, 84, who has ruled the small North African nation (pop. 7.6 million) since it gained independence from France in 1956, regularly conjures up foreign plots in order to justify suppression of dissent. Despite his age and frail health, Bourguiba's hold on power is virtually absolute: his Destourian Socialist Party holds every seat in parliament, most opposition newspapers have been shut down, and competing political parties are restricted...
When President Habib Bourguiba married Wassila Bent Muhammad Ben Ammar in 1962, the Tunisian press called it a "love match." Over the years, the pair had frequent clashes, after which she would depart the presidential palace for extended sulks abroad. One such absence was expected to end early this month on the occasion of Bourguiba's 83rd birthday, but Wassila, now 74, failed to turn...
...White House to protest the tenor of some of Speakes' comments. Next day, the White House backtracked a bit by saying that while the Israeli raid may have been "understandable as an expression of self- defense," it could not be "condoned." President Reagan belatedly sent his "condolences" to Bourguiba. Other officials acknowledged that the U.S. had played an important part in persuading the Tunisian leader to give the P.L.O. a place of refuge after it was driven out of Beirut by the Israelis...