Hundreds protest as Bin Salman visits Tunisia

TUNIS - Hundreds of Tunisians protested on Tuesday against a visit by Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince, denouncing the kingdom's de facto ruler as a murderer in a second straight day of demonstrations condemning the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, heir to the throne of the world's top oil exporter, left Cairo on Tuesday and was expected in Tunis in late afternoon on a tour that has also taken him to Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates.

The killing of Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist and a critic of the crown prince, at Riyadh's consulate in Istanbul six weeks ago has strained Saudi Arabia's ties with the West and battered Prince Mohammed's image abroad.

Saudi Arabia has said the prince had no prior knowledge of the murder. After offering numerous contradictory explanations, Riyadh said last month that Khashoggi had been killed and his body dismembered when negotiations to persuade him to return to Saudi Arabia failed.

Hundreds of protesters marched through the central Habib Bourguiba avenue in Tunis, scene of the mass protests that toppled Ben Ali in 2011.

They chanted "the murderer is not welcome in Tunisia" and "Shame on Tunisia's rulers" for receiving bin Salman.

Protesters also called for an end to the Saudi-led military campaign in neighboring Yemen, which was launched by Prince Mohammed in his role as defence minister in 2015.

Ties sometimes strained

Journalists put up a huge banner at their union showing the prince with a saw, which Turkish sources have said was used to dismember Khashoggi in Istanbul. It read: "No to the pollution of the Tunisian revolution."

Dozens of Tunisian rights activists and journalists staged a similar protest on Monday.

Last week Nourredine Ben Ticha, adviser to Tunisia's President Beji Caid Essebsi, said the truth about the killing of the Saudi journalist needed to be established but the incident should not be used to harm the stability of a 'brotherly country'.

Tunisia and Saudi Arabia are very different political systems. The kingdom is an absolute monarchy while Tunisia has undergone a democratic transition since 2011.

The north African country has been holding free elections since then and agreed in 2014 on a constitution guaranteeing fundamental rights such as freedom of speech.

Tunisia was a strong Saudi ally under Ben Ali but ties have since been strained at times. The kingdom granted exile to Ben Ali who flew to Jeddah on the Red Sea after his ousting, resisting calls by some Tunisian parties to hand him over.

Another irritant is that moderate Islamists - the driving force behind the current protests against the Saudi crown prince - have been sharing power with secularists in Tunisia since the 2011 Arab Spring.

Political Islam

Secularists and liberals in Tunisia have accused the Islamist Ennahda Party of amassing too much power. The party was accused of being behind a series of political assassinations in the country, a scandal that eventually lead to a political crisis and the resignation of the Islamist-led government in 2013.

Some critics have said that the party's philosophy of political Islam is inspired in part by the 1979 Iranian revolution as well as the Muslim Brotherhood.

Riyadh's opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood, which is banned in Saudi Arabia, has been brewing for decades but came to a head after the events of the Arab Spring, especially over the example set in Egypt with the overthrow of Mohammed Morsi's Islamist government in 2013. 

Brotherhood figures in Saudi Arabia at the time signed petitions and statements denouncing the Saudi government's support for Morsi's ouster.

In contrast, Tunisia has since 2011 expanded cooperation with Qatar, with which Saudi Arabia and three other Arab states severed trade and transport ties in June 2017. The four accused Doha of supporting radical jihadists and abetting Iran's interference in neighbouring countries, charges Doha denies.

Tunisia also has strong ties with Turkey, another regional rival whose relations with Saudi Arabia have been strained by the Khashoggi killing as well as wider policy disagreements including Ankara's support for Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood.

The prince is expected to fly on to a G20 summit in Argentina at the end of his Tunisia visit.