Tunisia's Islamist party Ennahda, tipped to dominate elections later this month, on Saturday condemned an attack on the home of a television chief over alleged blasphemy, denying any role in it.

But Ennahda party chief Rached Ghannouchi equally accused the Nessma television station of "provocation" for airing a film that depicts an image of God as an old, bearded man.

A court in Tunisia Friday handed a 15-year jail term to Imed Trabelsi, a relative of the country's ousted president, a legal source told AFP, to add to two other sentences passed this summer.

Trabelsi -- nephew of the wife of Zine el Abidine Ben Ali, toppled in a popular uprising in January -- was convicted of having passed bad checks and was also fined 150,000 dinars (76,000 euros, 105,000 dollars).

Police fired tear gas Friday at hundreds of people demonstrating against a private television station accused of blasphemy for airing a film with an image of God.

The demonstrators, mainly conservative Muslim Salafists, protested against Nessma television for the second time in a week after it broadcast "Persepolis", a globally-acclaimed animated film on Iran's 1979 revolution.

The head of a private Tunisian TV channel apologized Tuesday for airing part of a film judged blasphemous by Muslims, after Islamists launched an attack on the network's offices in protest.

"I apologize," Nessma TV president Nebil Karoui said on Monastir radio about Friday's broadcast of "Persepolis", a globally-acclaimed film on Iran's 1979 revolution.

Around 300 Tunisian Salafists on Sunday attacked the headquarters of a private TV station that aired a French-Iranian film and organized a debate on religious extremism, the channel said.

"Three hundred people attacked our offices and tried to set fire to them," Nessma chairman Nebil Karoui told AFP, explaining that death threats had been sent after Friday night's showing of "Persepolis", an animation film on Iran's Islamic revolution.

Tunisia has arrested a colonel in the former Libyan intelligence service, hiding out in a rented house in a remote town after Moammar Gadhafi's fall, the official TAP news agency said Saturday.

The officer had crossed the border using false identity papers more than a month ago, according to a security source cited by the agency, who did not name the colonel.

Six hundred Tunisian illegal immigrants who arrived in Italy by boat have been deported in a week, the interior ministry announced Sunday.

They were put on several flights from Palermo, Sicily, under an agreement signed on April 5 between Tunis and Rome arranging the systematic deportation of Tunisians arriving illegally.

Libya has issued a summons for Moammar Gadhafi's former prime minister Baghdadi al-Mahmudi, who fled the country for neighboring Tunisia, the interim justice minister said Wednesday.

"The prosecutor general has issued a summons for former Prime Minister Baghdadi al-Mahmudi," the minister, Mohammed al-Alagi, told a news conference in Tripoli.

Al-Baghdadi al-Mahmoudi, Libya's former prime minister under Moammar Gadhafi, was arrested in Tunisia and jailed Thursday for six months for illegal entry, a Tunisian justice ministry spokesman told Agence France Presse.

Baghdadi, who was arrested on Wednesday, "appeared before the state prosecutor in Tozeur (430 kilometers south of Tunis) and sentenced to six months in prison with immediate effect," Kadhem Zine el Abidine said.

The Tunisian army on Wednesday destroyed a convoy that included vehicles mounted with anti-aircraft guns in a remote southern region near the Algerian border, the defense ministry said.

"A helicopter destroyed seven out of the nine vehicles spotted by an aerial patrol on Wednesday at 05:00 GMT," ministry spokesman Haykel Bouzouita said.