Professor Bennoune Speaks at Event for Slain Tunisian Human Rights Leader

Professor Karima Bennoune spoke at a colloquium honoring the second anniversary of the assassination of leading Tunisian human rights lawyer and opposition activist Chokri Belaid held in Tunis, Tunisia. The colloquium was part of a weekend of events memorializing Belaid's death held in Tunis February 7-9. Professor Bennoune was the guest of Fondation Chokri Belaid Contre La Violence and Friedrich Ebert Stiftung.

Professor Bennoune spoke about political assassinations in neighboring Algeria during the "dark decade" of impunity, and the work there against impunity for those crimes by associations of victims of terrorism. She shared the floor with speakers from Iraq, Lebanon, Morocco, and Tunisia. She also visited Belaid's grave and the site of his assassination.

Karima Bennoune is an author, lecturer, teacher, and international law scholar as well as the first Arab-American to be honored with the Derrick A. Bell Award from the Section on Minority Groups of the Association of American Law Schools. She recently was awarded the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for her book Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here: Untold Stories from the Fight against Muslim Fundamentalism, now available in paperback from W.W. Norton & Company.