Tunisian President Dead

President Mohamed Beji Caid Essebsi of Tunisia has died, the presidency said in a statement on Thursday after being hospitalized at a Military Hospital in the capital Tunis on Wednesday.

President Essebsi who was born on November 29, 1926 became the fifth President of Tunisia from December 2014 until his death, Ghana News Agency information indicates.

According to information available to the GNA, President Essebsi previously served as Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1981 to 1986 and as Prime Minister from February 2011 to December 2011.

President Essebsi was the founder of the Nidaa Tounes Political Party, which won a plurality in the 2014 parliamentary election. In December 2014, he won the first regular presidential election following the Tunisian Revolution, becoming Tunisia’s first freely elected president.

According to his profile, President Essebsi’s first involvement in politics came in 1941, when he joined the Neo Destour youth organization in Hammam-Lif.

He studied law in Paris and became a lawyer in 1952 at the Tunis Bar, where he began his career with the defence of Neo Destour activists.

He was a follower of Tunisia’s post-independence leader Habib Bourguiba. He then joined Bourguiba as an adviser following the country’s independence from France in 1956.

Source: BBC