Leila Ben Ali, the reviled wife of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, said both the deposed Tunisian dictator and her hoped for "justice" in an interview published by French daily Le Parisien on Sunday.

In the first interview since the couple fled to Saudi Arabia after a popular uprising in January last year that sparked the Arab Spring protests, she also said her husband wanted Tunisians to recognize his achievements.

Tunisia's post-revolution political alliance faced its deepest crisis yet Monday after the Islamist prime minister ignored the president's opposition to the extradition of a former top Libyan official.

President Moncef Marzouki was furious that Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali ordered the transfer to Libya of Moammar Gadhafi’s last prime minister, Baghdadi al-Mahmoudi, without his consent.

Tunisia on Sunday extradited Moammar Gadhafi’s former prime minister to Libya, the government announced, despite protests from his lawyers and rights groups that he faces execution.

Baghdadi al-Mahmoudi, who fled to neighboring Tunisia last September shortly after rebel fighters took the capital Tripoli, "was extradited this morning," a spokesman for Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali told Agence France Presse.

A Tunisian military plane destroyed three cars loaded with weapons that were driving just north of the country's southern border with Algeria and Libya, the official TAP news agency said Thursday.

The plane attacked the vehicles after their occupants opened fire on it as it patrolled the southern zone of Satah al-Hassan 100 kilometers (60 miles) north of the triple border overnight Wednesday, TAP reported.

Tunisia on Thursday banned protests planned by hardline Islamists demanding a more religious state following the worst unrest since the 2011 uprising that gave birth to the Arab Spring.

The North African country has been rocked by three days of violence that left one dead and dozens wounded after ultra-conservative Salafists took issue with works at an art exhibition they deemed offensive to Islam.

Tunisia's Interior Ministry on Thursday banned demonstrations in the face of calls by Islamists for protests to uphold sacred values after Friday prayers, ministry spokesman Khaled Tarrouche told AFP.

"No march has been authorized by the ministry of the interior," Tarrouche said, adding that "the law will be applied against all acts of violence... Some calls for violence are circulating on Facebook."

A military court on Wednesday sentenced ousted Tunisian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali to life in prison for his role in the deadly repression during last year's popular uprising, TAP news agency said.

Prosecutors had sought the death penalty for Ben Ali, who is exiled in Saudi Arabia, over the killing of 22 people while trying to put down the revolt in the two central cities of Thala and Kasserine.

The leader of Tunisia's ruling Islamist party on Wednesday dismissed suggestions that recent unrest was the result of a call to rise up by Al-Qieda supremo Ayman al-Zawahiri.

"Ayman al-Zawahiri has no influence in Tunisia. This man is a disaster for Islam and for Muslims," Ennahda leader Rached Ghannouchi told reporters.

Tunisia's top authorities Wednesday condemned both "extremist groups that threaten freedoms" and "attacks on religion" after rioting blamed on hardline Islamists over an art exhibition.

A joint statement by the heads of the state, the constituent assembly and the government followed the most serious unrest since the Arab Spring, in which one person was killed and around 100 injured, and 165 arrested.

A military court in Tunisia sentenced ousted president Zine el Abidine Ben Ali to 20 years imprisonment in absentia Wednesday on various charges including incitement to murder, the TAP news agency reported.

Ben Ali, who is exiled in Saudi Arabia, was found guilty of "inciting disorder, murder and looting," the court said in its verdict over the deaths of four youths, shot dead in the town of Ouardanine in mid-January 2011.