The premiers of Algeria, Libya and Tunisia are set to meet in the Libyan oasis of Ghadames on Saturday to discuss security along their common borders, a Libyan official said.

"A tripartite meeting between the prime ministers of Algeria, Libya and Tunisia will be held on Saturday in Ghadames to discuss border security," the protocol official told AFP on Thursday.

A Tunisian NGO that defends minorities and campaigns notably against homophobia and anti-semitism on Wednesday accused a controversial militia close to the ruling Islamists of attacking its office.

"Our offices were broken into and vandalized. We have just filed a complaint. We know very well who did that. It was the League for the Protection of the Revolution, which has threatened us several times," said Yamina Thabet, head of the Tunisian Association for the Defense of Minorities.

A Tunisian military appeals court on Friday handed down a heavier one-year suspended prison term to a former aide of President Moncef Marzouki for defaming the military, his lawyer said.

Ayoub Messoudi, 33, was earlier given a four-month suspended term on charges of "defaming" the army and "undermining senior officials in the military," lawyer Leila Haddad told AFP.

A key figure from the ousted regime of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali wanted by Tunisia is currently not in Turkey and has returned to France, a diplomatic source told Agence France Presse on Friday.

Tunisia has asked Turkey to arrest and extradite Saida Agrebi under an international arrest warrant after her presence in the Turkish capital was disclosed by Tunisian media.

A Tunisian university dean accused of assaulting a veiled student said on Thursday his trial was aimed at undermining democracy after the judge set a January 17 date for the verdict.

"I am confident that justice will be done for the university," Habib Kazdoghli, dean of the humanities faculty at Manouba University, said as he emerged from the courtroom.

Tunisian police raided a working class suburb of the capital in a hunt for suspected Salafist arms caches on Sunday, sparking a firefight in which a woman was killed, the interior ministry said.

Police came under Kalashnikov fire in the Douar Hicher neighborhood, northwest of Tunis, and fired back, seriously wounding the gunman and killing his wife, ministry spokesman Khaled Tarrouche told Agence France Presse.

A young unemployed teenager has killed himself in Sidi Bouzid, the marginalized town in central Tunisia where the country's revolution erupted two years ago, witnesses said on Tuesday.

Wissem Hani, 17, died on Sunday from a massive electric shock after clinging to an electric pylon in protest at his bleak circumstances, the witnesses told an AFP journalist.

The Lebanese lawyer of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali on Monday blasted as "illegal" the auction of the deposed Tunisian dictator's assets and threatened to take the case to the U.N. Human Rights Council.

"The Tunisian authorities have committed an illegal act and we will take this matter to the United Nations Human Rights Council," Akram Azouri told AFP.

Hundreds of supporters of Tunisia's Islamist ruling party attacked members of a secular opposition party and besieged the hotel where they were meeting on Saturday, an AFP correspondent said.

The demonstrators brandishing banners hostile to the Nidaa Tounes (Call of Tunisia) party first gathered outside the Hotel Midoune on Djerba island but then broke through a police cordon and stormed into the hotel.

Tunisian Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali kicked off viewing on Saturday for an auction of thousands of luxury items once owned by ousted dictator Zine El Abidine Ali and his family.

Jebali inspected 40 luxury cars, thousands of clothing, jewelry items and art works on the eve of the public auction which is being held in the Tunis suburb of Gammarth in a bid to raise millions of euros for government coffers.