His assassination is attributed to La Main Rouge (The Red Hand), an armed organisation that favoured a French presence in Tunisia.

More recently, on 18 December 2009, it was confirmed to the Al Jazeera news organisation, by a man called Antoine Méléro, who claimed to be a former Main Rouge member, that the Main Rouge had been a military wing of the French Service de Documentation Extérieure et de Contre-Espionnage (External Documentation and Counter-Espionage Service) or SDECE.

[4] During the Second World War, with Tunisia subject to the French puppet government at Vichy, a ban on political and trades union activity made life difficult.

He is a stocky man, who greets you with hand outstretched and laughing blue eyes, set in a round face of fair complexion.

Une petite moustache rousse, coupée court, accentue le type occidental du leader syndicaliste.

"[2] The strikes, demonstrations and street protests in support of independence intensified from 1946, in parallel with demands for improvements in living and working conditions for Tunisians.

The UGTT, directed by Hached, played a central role in triggering and choreographing episodes of unrest and in radicalising popular demands.

Finally, with its social and economic programmes, along with its precepts on freedoms and liberties, the UGTT provided the nationalist movement with a coherent national agenda for the post liberation era.

[2] In this context of crisis the UGTT found itself in the front line of political and armed resistance against the French protectorate authorities.

It retained a level of protection for trades union legislation and from the support of the ICFTU, the labour movement in the US and the Democratic Party, which at this time held power in the United States.

For as long as this manly liberating gesture remains unaccomplished, you will not have done your duty in the sight of God, and innocent blood will be on your own hands."

Nous en démasquerons d'autres, s'il est nécessaire, tous les autres, si haut placés soient-ils.

« Si un homme menace de te tuer, frappe-le à la tête » dit un proverbe syrien.

Various departments and agencies of French Intelligence started, in October 1952, to draw up proposals: he could be removed from Tunisian territory, imprisoned, placed under house arrest or murdered.

During the next couple of months he became subject to permanent surveillance and there was a proliferation of threatening tracts and leaflets emanating from La Main Rouge ("The Red Hand").

A few moments later a second car appeared carrying three men: observing that he was still alive they approached him and shot him in the head, before depositing his body beside the road less than a kilometer away.

[6] The announcement of his death on the radio at midday triggered protests across the country, along with demonstrations in Casablanca,[8] Cairo, Damascus, Beirut, Karachi Djakarta, Milan, Brussels and Stockholm.

[10] The French liberal establishment rushed into print to denounce the assassination in newspaper articles, public declarations, petitions and demonstrations.

Prominent among these were Daniel Guérin, Roger Stéphane, Claude Bourdet David Rousset, René Louzon, Alain Savary and Charles-André Julien.