By Tarek Amara

REUTERS
TUNIS: Tunisian security forces used tear gas and truncheons Monday to disperse a crowd of protesters in the capital demanding the government step down for failing to prosecute supporters of the ousted president.
Thousands of people also gathered for protests in towns and cities elsewhere, in the biggest show of popular anger in months in Tunisia, a North African country whose revolution at the start of this year inspired the “Arab Spring” uprisings.

Several hundred protesters tried to assemble in front of the Interior Ministry headquarters, on the central Bourguiba Avenue.
“We need a new revolution … Nothing has changed,” one protester, Mounir Troudi, told Reuters.
Police, who were gathered in large numbers in front of the Interior Ministry, fired tear-gas canisters and hit some of the protesters with truncheons, forcing them to scatter.

Tunisia electrified the Middle East when mass protests forced longstanding leader Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali to flee to Saudi Arabia. Tunisia’s revolution became the template for uprisings rippling across the region.
However, the caretaker authorities now running the country have struggled to restore stability. Protests and strikes break out regularly.

Some groups involved in toppling Ben Ali say he and his supporters should have been prosecuted more vigorously and they suspect some in government of sympathizing with the ousted administration.
There was an outpouring of anger after the justice minister under Ben Ali was released from jail and a high-profile friend of the ex-president’s wife fled to Paris without facing trial.

Ben Ali himself has been tried and found guilty in asbentia on charges including theft, corruption and illegal possession of drugs and weapons, receiving sentences of up to 35 years.
Many Tunisians contrast that with Egypt, where former President Hosni Mubarak and his sons have been put on televised trial, appearing in the courtroom inside a cage.

Protesters in front of the Interior Ministry chanted: “Ben Ali is in Saudi Arabia and his clan is still here!”
Witnesses in the city of Sfax, 250 kilometers south of Tunis, said about 1,000 protesters gathered to demand the resignation of interim Prime Minister Beji Caid Sebsi and his government.

Residents in Sidi Bouzid, in central Tunisia, said protesters assembled in front of the town’s courthouse.
It was in that town that street trader Mohammad Bouazizi set fire to himself last December, unleashing the protests that eventually forced out Ben Ali.