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TEHRAN, Jul 25 - Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi, the North African country's first democratically elected leader and heir to Tunisia's founding father, has died. He was 92.
TEHRAN, Young Journalists Club (YJC) - Essebsi died Thursday morning at the Tunis military hospital, where he was taken the night before, an official in the president's office told The Associated Press. The presidential Facebook page said funeral plans will be announced soon.
Under Tunisia's constitution, the president of the parliament will assume the presidency for 45 to 90 days while elections are organized.
Essebsi won office in 2014 in the wake of the country's Arab Spring uprising.
Most of Essebsi's political career came well before the Arab Spring. He was a symbol of Tunisia's independence generation, though he outlived most of his peers who helped the country shake off French rule in 1956.
Born Nov. 29, 1926 when Tunisia was a French protectorate, Essebsi entered politics in the 1940s and trained as a lawyer in Paris. But his name is most associated with Tunisia's first president, Habib Bourguiba, who built up the country and educated its people — and brooked little opposition.
Essebsi proudly claimed to be Bourguiba's disciple, and from 1965 to 1986, he held several senior roles including defense minister, foreign minister and interior minister, AP reported.
After Bourguiba was overthrown in a bloodless coup by Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in 1987, Essebsi took up a quiet life as a lawyer and author, until his re-emergence after the Arab Spring.
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