'Gaddafi loyalists' attack Tunisian embassy

Unidentified assailants threw a homemade bomb on the Tunisian embassy in Libya on Tuesday, causing some damage but no casualties, officials and witnesses said. The attack protested the Tunisian government’s decision to extradite Baghdadi Mahmoudi, the former Libyan prime minister, to Libya, according to interior ministry security officials. The officials said the attackers were supporters of slain Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, who was overthrown and killed last year by rebel forces protesting against his regime. Mahmoudi served as Gaddafi’s prime minister from 2006 until he fled to neighbouring Tunisia at about the time rebel fighters seized the capital, Tripoli, in August 2011. The post-revolutionary Libyan government considers it a measure of the country’s transformation that trials of people like Mahmoudi and Gaddafi’s imprisoned son, Seif al-Islam, will be held in Libya. But the news of Mahmoudi’s extradition on Sunday was met with anger from Tunisian President Moncef Marzouki who disliked the fact that Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali ordered Mahmoudi’s transfer to Libya without his consent. Marzouki had always opposed the extradition, arguing that Libya’s new regime offered insufficient guarantees of a fair trial and on the grounds that the former Libyan official risked torture or death. But when Jebali approved the move Sunday, the president was in southern Tunisia for an official ceremony. In Tunisia on Tuesday, opposition parties staged a walkout at parliament to protest the government’s decision to extradite Mahmoudi. The assembly’s speaker refused on Tuesday to alter the day’s agenda and open a discussion on the extradition, opposition parties walked out. They then further interrupted proceedings by singing the national anthem from the edges of the chamber.