TUNIS: Tunisia wants to have ousted president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and his family arrested and put on trial for theft and currency offenses, the justice minister said Wednesday. The international police organization Interpol has been asked to help arrest Ben Ali, his wife Leila Trabelsi and other family members who have fled the country, Lazhar Karoui Chebbi told a news conference. Ben Ali allegedly amassed vast riches during his 23 years in power, with his family controlling many of Tunisia's biggest companies. “We are asking Interpol to find all those who fled, including the president and this woman, for trial in Tunisia,” the justice minister said. Chebbi also said six members of the presidential guard would be put on trial for inciting violence after Ben Ali's departure. In Tunis, protesters managed to get into the building where the justice minister was speaking and crowded around him after the news conference to petition him about relatives who are still in prison. Chebbi said that, in the disorder that followed the fall of Ben Ali, about 11,000 prisoners had escaped from Tunisian jails. On Jan. 15, the day after Ben Ali left, dozens of inmates were reported to have been killed in a mass breakout from a prison in the town of Mahdia. The same day, 42 inmates were killed in a prison riot in Monastir in what was described by a hospital official as “complete chaos”. Chebbi said 2,460 prisoners had been released since Ben Ali fell. It was not clear how many of them had been in jail for political crimes, but the government said earlier it was releasing all political prisoners. In Tunis, demonstrators clashed with police Wednesday, as days of peaceful protests demanding a purge of former regime loyalists in an interim government descended into violence. Clashes broke out near government offices in the old city, or casbah, where riot police fired teargas at hundreds of demonstrators, mainly teenagers and young men, who threw stones. Wednesday's protesters appeared to be Tunisians from the rural hinterland who have been camping out at the government compound. The Tunisian General Labor Union announced a general strike Wednesday in Sfax, Tunisia's second city and economic center.
