A Tunisian military helicopter crashed on Friday near an air base in the capital's suburb of Aouina, injuring two people, a defense ministry spokesman told Agence France Presse.

"A BHT (U.S.-made Bell) helicopter, with the pilot, copilot and three mechanics on board, made a crash landing. Two were lightly hurt and taken to a military hospital," Mokhtar Ben Nasr said.

Moncef Trabelsi, the brother-in-law of ousted Tunisian strongman Zine El Abidine Ben Ali who was jailed for fraud, has died in custody of a brain tumour, the country's prisons chief said on Friday.

"He died at the neurological hospital where he was taken (from jail) on March 18. He had been operated on for a brain tumor," the prisons chief, Habib Sboui, told Agence France Presse.

A Tunisian Salafist who fought in Syria was arrested on Wednesday after defending jihad, or Islamic holy war, in a television broadcast, a justice ministry source said.

Abou Zeid Ettounsi was detained under an arrest warrant issued by the public prosecutor after appearing on a private Tunisian TV channel, which questioned him about Tunisians taking part in the Syrian conflict, the source added.

Rached Ghannouchi, the head of Tunisia's ruling Islamist party, said he backs the application of the death penalty, describing it as a "natural law" in a television interview to be broadcast Monday evening.

"We say that capital punishment is a natural law, a soul for a soul. And whoever threatens the life of another must know that his life is also threatened," the Ennahda party's veteran chief told news channel France 24.

Tunisia must find a new economic model to raise the roughly 20 percent of its people living in poverty from their quagmire, President Moncef Marzouki said on Saturday.

"The objective is liberate from poverty two million Tunisians over the course of the next five years," Marzouki told a meeting of the World Social Forum, an anti-globalization group that wrapped its first-ever meeting in an Arab country.

Dozens of angry Tunisians brandishing shoes protested Friday demanding the resignation of the minister of women's affairs, Sihem Badi, accusing her of failing to stand up to the ruling Islamists.

Badi has for months been strongly criticized by civil society activists over her ties with Ennahda, the Islamist party that heads the coalition government which secular opposition groups accuse of seeking to curtail women's rights.

Supporters of fugitive Salafist leader Abu Iyadh, wanted over a deadly attack on the U.S. embassy last September, threatened Thursday to topple Tunisia's government led by moderate Islamist party Ennahda.

"To the leaders of Ennahda, if he remains restrain your sick one, otherwise he will be the target of our war to bring him down," said a post on the Facebook page of jihadist group Ansar al-Sharia, referring to Ennahda Prime Minister Ali Larayedh.

Protesters on Monday demanded the resignation of Tunisia's minister for women's affairs, Sihem Badi, accusing her of defending a children's nursery where a three-year-old girl was raped.

The protesters, among them relatives of the victim, gathered outside the ministry in Tunis shouting slogans against Badi, including "Minister of shame, get out!" and "Ministers who protect pedophiles have no place among us."

A camp in southern Tunisia for people who fled the Libya conflict is to close in late June despite protests by residents who have failed to win asylum elsewhere, the U.N. refugee agency said on Friday.

"Considering the significant reduction in the number of arrivals seeking asylum and thanks to the success of the resettlement operations, the Tunisian authorities and the UNHCR have agreed to close the Choucha transit camp on June 30," it said in a statement.

Human Rights Watch on Wednesday called on Tunisia to "urgently" repeal its criminal defamation law, which can lead to two years in jail and which it said has a "chilling effect" on freedom of speech.

"Tunisian authorities should urgently amend the country’s law on defamation to make it conform to international norms on freedom of expression," the New York-based press watchdog said.