Tunis :Mohammad Bakhti, a prominent figure in Tunisia’s Salafist movement, died yesterrday, nearly two months after launching a hunger strike following his arrest for an attack on the US embassy, his lawyer said.
“He died in hospital at around 2:00 am overnight,” said Abdul Basit Bin Mubarak, noting that his death came after another member of the Islamist movement, Bashir Golli, died on Thursday also after refusing food for nearly two months.
The lawyer had warned that Bakhti, who was suffering from a brain haemorrhage, was in critical condition for several days.
Bakhti and Golli started their hunger strike in late September, days after their arrest for a September 14 attack on the US embassy by a crowd of Islamists during which four of the assailants were killed in clashes with security forces.
They insisted they were innocent and protested over the conditions of detention, while the Salafist movement charged it was being victimised by the authorities.
Bakhti was considered a senior figure in the jihadist movement and close to Abu Eyad, the alleged organiser of the embassy attack who is on the run.
He was jailed for 12 years in 2007 for bloody clashes between the army and Islamists in Soliman, near Tunis, under Zine Al Abidine Bin Ali’s regime but released under an amnesty declared after the revolution.
In the attack on the US mission, several hundred protesters, angry over an anti-Islam film made in the United States, stormed the sprawling embassy compound in a suburb of Tunis.
More than 100 people were detained following the attack.
Tunisia’s hardline Islamists have carried out numerous acts of violence since last year’s revolution that ousted veteran strongman Bin Ali.
