Supporters of hardline Islamist group Ansar al-Sharia clashed with Tunisian police in two cities on Sunday after the government banned its annual rally and group urged its supporters to stand firm against the authorities.

Violence broke out in the central city of Kairouan, venue of the planned rally, and in a district of Tunis.

Clashes between police forces and Salafists left a 27-year-old Tunisian dead, three protesters and 11 officers wounded, according to media reports.

In Kairouan, around 11,000 police officers and soldiers blocked an annual conference Sunday where tens of thousands of members of Ansar al-Sharia had been expected to gather. The group’s supporters threw stones at police, who fired teargas in response.

Police also prevented the group, which openly supports alQaeda, from holding a smaller religious meeting in the Ettadamen district of the capital Tunis. Clashes broke out with Islamists who chanted: “The rule of the tyrant should fall.”

Police fired teargas and shots into the air to disperse some 500 stone-throwing protesters, some of whom set fire to cars, lowered the Tunisian flag and replaced it with a black al Qaeda banner.

“We call on our brothers to gather in large numbers in the Ettadhamen district of the capital,” the hardline Islamist group said on its Facebook page.

Tunisia has been rocked by attacks blamed on militant Islamists since the uprising that toppled president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, and Ansar al-Sharia is considered the most radical of the extremist groups that emerged after the 2011 revolution.

The government has hardened its position towards Islamist extremists in recent months, after the moderate Islamist party Ennahda was strongly criticized for being too lenient and failing to prevent a wave of violence around the country.

(Source / 19.05.2013)

Tunisian security forces deployed in strength on Saturday after Salafist movement Ansar al-Sharia called on its hardline Islamist supporters to defy a government ban on its annual congress.

There was a heavy police presence at tollbooths along the main highway from the capital to the central city of Kairouan where the Salafists have vowed to hold Sunday’s gathering, AFP correspondents reported.

Police were singling out for checks the private minibuses that ply between Tunisian towns, with special attention paid to men with beards, as sported by Salafists.

Inside the city, helicopters hovered overhead and police checkpoints were set up, while special units were deployed in the square facing the mosque which is the venue for the congress.

A local police officer, declining to be named, said: “We have taken all measures to ensure the meeting does not go ahead… We will not allow those coming for this congress to enter the city.”

Meanwhile, maps were posted on Facebook pages close to the Salafist movement locating the checkpoints and possible routes to avoid them.

Ansar al-Sharia had urged its supporters to travel to the venue in groups in a bid to get past police.

“We advise our brothers coming to Kairouan to travel in groups and not to be separated because the agents of the tyrant are blocking most intersections and provoking our brothers by showing their weapons,” it said on its Facebook page.

In Tunis, large numbers of police vans and army trucks were visible both in the city center and in neighborhoods regarded as Salafist strongholds.

As tensions mounted, a U.S. embassy travel advisory warned Americans against travelling to Kairouan, saying “large rallies and demonstrations are possible” if the congress goes ahead.

“There is the potential for disruption to traffic in the area of Kairouan and possible confrontations with security forces. The embassy recommends against all travel to Kairouan during this period.”

The Salafists have been blamed for a wave of violence across Tunisia, including an attack on the U.S. embassy in September that left four assailants dead.

Ansar al-Sharia is considered the most radical of the extremist groups that emerged after the 2011 revolution that ousted veteran strongman Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali.

The group’s fugitive leader, Saif Allah Bin Hussein, a former al-Qaeda fighter in Afghanistan, warned last week he would wage war against the government led by moderate Islamist party Ennahda, accusing it of policies in breach of Islam.

The interior ministry on Friday said Ansar al-Sharia posed a threat to public order as it confirmed the ban on the planned congress.

“We have decided to prohibit this gathering, which would be in violation of the law and because of the threat it represents to public order,” it announced.

Ahead of the ministry’s announcement, Ansar al-Sharia, which does not recognize the authority of the state, warned that it would hold the government responsible for any violence.

“We are not asking permission from the government to preach the word of God and we warn against any police intervention to prevent the congress from taking place,” spokesman Seifeddine Rais said.

Rais said more than 40,000 people were expected to attend.

The interior ministry retorted that “all those who defy the authority of the state and its institutions, who try to sow chaos, who incite violence and hatred will bear all the responsibility”.

It promised a tough response to “anyone who tries to attack the forces of order” and said the police and army are on “high alert to protect the security of citizens and their property”.

Radical Islamist group Hizb ut Tahrir condemned the interior ministry ban but also appealed to Ansar al-Sharia to postpone the congress to avoid bloodshed.

“We say to Ansar al-Sharia that we consider it wise and a priority to announce the postponement of the congress, placing the whole responsibility for it on the government,” the group said in a statement.

Otherwise, “Sunday will be a day of bloody confrontation.”

The Salafists, who advocate an ultra-conservative brand of Sunni Islam, have been blamed for a spate of attacks on police in recent months.

(Source / 18.05.2013)

The Tunisian government has definitively banned Salafist group Ansar al-Sharia from holding its annual congress at the weekend, the interior ministry said on Friday.

“We have decided to prohibit this gathering, which would be in violation of the law and because of the threat it represents to public order,” a statement said.

Tens of thousands of Salafists were expected to attend the annual congress of Ansar al-Sharia, a radical Tunisian group whose leader is on the run.

“On Sunday, we will God willing hold our congress and there will be more than 40,000 of us in Kairouan,” Sami Essid told AFP.

He said the annual gathering, just the third to be held by the radical Islamist group, will take place after afternoon prayers at the Great Mosque in Kairouan, in central Tunisia, considered Islam’s fourth-holiest city.

Registered as a non-governmental organization in April 2011, Ansar al-Sharia is the most radical of the Islamist movements that emerged in Tunisia after the revolution earlier that year that overthrew secular dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

Abu Iyadh, whose real name is Seif Allah Ibn Hussein, is accused of orchestrating numerous acts of violence and has been on the run since September after Islamist protesters attacked the US embassy in Tunis.

A veteran jihadist who fought with Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, he threatened last weekend to wage war against the government led by moderate Islamist party Ennahda, saying that by targeting his followers it was attacking Islam.

“To the tyrants who think they are Islamists… know that the stupid things you are doing are dragging you to war,” he said in a message posted online, adding that young Salafists “won’t hesitate to sacrifice themselves for their religion in Kairouan.”

The authorities have hardened their position towards extremists in recent months, notably by stepping up military operations against jihadists with suspected links to Al-Qaeda who are hiding in the western region of Kasserine that borders Algeria.

Interior Minister Lotfi Ben Jeddou said last week that he would bring to justice “anyone inciting to murder or hatred… or who pitches tents for preaching in,” in a clear reference to the Salafists.

(Source / 17.05.2013)

President Moncef Marzouki called on leaders of Tunisia’s radical Salafist movement on Thursday to reject armed violence, saying during a meeting of “national dialogue” that the nation faced a terrorist threat.

“I am waiting for a clear condemnation of terrorism from the Salafist sheikhs in Tunisia,” he said, adding that the state was “determined to act against the dangers and to use all the military and security means at its disposal.”

“Everyone knows that Tunisia is now confronted by a terrorist threat from areas of instability both near and far,” Marzouki added, calling on Tunisians “to close ranks in the face of religious fanaticism.”

The president criticized in particular the Salafists’ control of mosques, their acts of violence and the practice of replacing the national flag with the black Salafist flag, a practice that has shocked many in Tunisia.

Yet Marzouki said the Salafist movement, which advocates an ultra-conservative brand of Sunni Islam, was a part of Tunisia’s social fabric and urged his countrymen to coexist, whether they were “modernists, Islamists or Salafists.”

Since the January 2011 revolution that overthrew president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, Tunisian security has been severely challenged by the rise of militant Islamists, who are blamed for a wave of violence across the country.

Marzouki was heckled during his speech when he expressed his opposition to the sight of female students wearing the niqab while sitting exams, alluding to the ban on the full face veil in some universities.

The “national dialogue” was organized by Tunisia’s main labor union, the UGTT, and gathered around 100 political parties, NGOs and employer organizations.

The meeting follows a month of talks between the parties in power and the opposition, which resulted in an accord on Wednesday on some of the thorny issues that have blocked the long-delayed drafting of the new constitution.

The dialogue launched by the UGTT is to focus on ways of ending the political instability that has rocked Tunisia, and which peaked after the assassination in February of secular opposition leader Chokri Belaid.

Reflecting the lingering mistrust, Ziad Lakhdar, who replaced Belaid as head of his Democratic Patriots party, again accused the ruling Islamist party of his murder, prompting its leader Rached Ghannouchi to quit the meeting temporarily.

(Source / 16.05.2013)

The threat Islamist militants posed to Tunisia under ousted dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was worse than the current threat, the ruling Islamist party Ennahda’s leader Rached Ghannouchi said on Thursday.”What happened in Soliman and Rouhia was worse than what is currently happening in Mont Chaambi, even if it is a massive crime,” he told a news conference.

Soliman is a town near Tunis where clashes in 2007 between the army and Islamists killed a soldier, two policeman and more than 10 Islamists.

 

Rouhia was the site of a gunfight with Al-Qaeda-linked militants in May 2011, after the revolution that toppled Ben Ali, in which two policemen and two Islamists were killed.

Since last week, the army has been hunting two groups of militant jihadists hiding out in the remote regions of Kef and Mont Chaambi along the border with Algeria.

The authorities say they are veterans of the Islamist rebellion in northern Mali with links to Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.

“There is no justification for violence in Tunisia, there is no place for jihad, except the jihad that promotes development and spreads goodwill,” said the veteran leader of Ennahda, which heads Tunisia’s coalition government.

“In Tunisia, terrorism cannot succeed because it is a moderate Muslim country. Fanaticism is an exception,” he added.

Ghannouchi sharply criticised the press coverage of the search operation that began last week, in which homemade bombs planted by the Islamists have wounded 16 members of the security forces, some of them seriously.

“The newspapers and certain people are saying that Tunisia is heading towards civil war. Terrorism in Tunisia cannot transform itself into civil war. That (claim) is an exaggeration and not objective.”

“We are fighting a phenomenon and we must all unite,” he said, while calling on the government to speed up its development projects and roll back the poverty in Tunisia that risks fuelling extremism.

Since the revolution in January 2011 that forced Ben Ali to flee, Tunisia has seen a proliferation of radical Islamist groups that were suppressed under the former dictator.

Those groups have been blamed for a wave of violence, notably an attack on the US embassy last September and the assassination of a leftist opposition leader in February, cases which Ennahda has sought to portray as isolated incidents.

(Source / 11.05.2013)

The jihadists being pursued by the army on Tunisia’s border with Algeria are veterans from fighting in Mali, where France has intervened against Islamist rebels, Interior Minister Lotfi Ben Jeddou told parliament on Wednesday.

“They came from Mali,” the minister said during an open session in the national assembly, without giving more details on the militants for whom the military has stepped its search over the past week.

“I would have liked this to be a closed session to be able to say more,” he told MPs, who were grilling him about the hunt for two groups hiding in the border region that the interior ministry has said are linked to Al-Qaeda.

Ben Jeddou had said earlier that one group located around Mount Chaambi consisted of around 20 people, “half of them Tunisian and half Algerian,” while the second group, based in the Kef region further north, was made up of a dozen armed militants.

Meanwhile, an Algerian security source denied reports that Algerian soldiers were involved in Tunisia’s ongoing military operations in Mount Chaambi, Al Arabiya reported on Wednesday.

“What is happening is a pure Tunisian concern; as for Algeria, it has taken precautionary and defensive security measures. No Algerian soldier can cross the borders of any neighboring country,” the source told Al Arabiya’s Arabic website.

“The Tunisian authorities indicated the presence of terrorists; therefore they are the ones that should respond to these questions,” he added.

Terrorist hunt

Tunisian Interior Minister Lotfi Ben Jeddou stressed that the Chaambi group had been pursued since December, when it allegedly carried out an attack on a border post that left a policeman dead.

But he said the hunt had been stepped up since the end of April, when homemade bombs planted by the militants began causing injuries to the armed forces combing the area.

So far 16 soldiers and members of the national guard have been wounded, some of them seriously.

Ben Jeddou said that in the past three days two alleged accomplices of the jihadists had been arrested, bringing to 37 the number of suspects detained in the region since December.

None of the combatants have yet been arrested or killed, according to the Tunisian defense ministry.

(Source / 08.05.2013)

Tunisian authorities on Tuesday recognized that two jihadist groups which the army has been hunting on the Algerian border have links to al-Qaeda, stressing their determination to take them out.

“There are two groups, one in the Kef region with around 15 people and the other in Mount Chaambi with around 20 people,” interior ministry spokesman Mohamed Ali Aroui told reporters, referring to the groups being pursued by the army since last week.

“There is a connection between the two groups, and the one in the Chaambi region has ties with the Okba Ibn Nafaa brigade, which is linked to Qaeda.”

“We will respond militarily to anyone who takes up arms against the state,” Aroui added.

Since the revolution in January 2011 that ousted Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, Tunisia has seen a sharp rise in the activity of radical Islamist groups that were suppressed under the former dictator.

Those groups have been blamed for a wave of violence, notably an attack on the US embassy last September and the assassination of a leftist opposition leader in February, cases which the ruling Islamist party Ennahda has sought to portray as isolated incidents.

The jihadists hiding out in the remote Mount Chaambi region are blamed for an attack on a border post in December that killed a member of the National Guard.

The army says there have been no direct clashes with the group, but homemade explosive devices they have place in the area have so far wounded 16 members of the security forces involved in the hunt, five of who lost legs.

Explosives, coded documents, maps and mobile phones were discovered at a camp used by the group, and the army troops has been using mortar fire to try to demine the area.

Aroui said the Chaambi fighters were from “neighboring countries,” notably Algeria, while army sources on the ground have said some were veteran Islamist militants who fought in northern Mali.

“They wanted to make Chaambi their base, but we have dismantled it and they no longer have a refuge,” said army spokesman Mokhtar Ben Nasr, adding that a search for the second group was launched on Tuesday in Kef, some 100 kilometers to the north.

“An extensive search is underway in the Kef and Jendouba mountains,” also close to the Algerian border, Ben Nasr said, without elaborating.

Tunisia and Algeria share a long, porous border which is often used by smugglers, and the army spokesman said the two countries were cooperating in the hunt for the jihadists.

Tunisia’s President Moncef Marzouki went to meet the troops involved in the search operations on Tuesday, according to his office.

“We are currently experiencing a crisis that requires a national effort,” Marzouki’s spokesman Adnene Manser told reporters.

“We need to have confidence in our army and give it strong support in combating this threat,” he said.

Tunisia’s opposition has strongly criticized the government for failing to catch the jihadists, accusing it of recognizing the threat they pose too late, despite the problems they have caused, and condemning the poorly-equipped state of the armed forces.

In December, the authorities announced the arrest of 16 militants belonging to the Okba Ibn Nafaa brigade, described as a cell of Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM ), in Tunisia’s Kasserine region, where Mount Chaambi is located.

But they had not until now confirmed a link between those arrested and the “terrorist group” holed up in the Chaambi region that the security forces have been tracking since the deadly December attack on the border post.

The government has in recent months warned of jihadists linked to AQIM infiltrating Tunisia’s borders and undermining its stability, especially since their occupation of northern Mali last year.

Bolstering those concerns, a leader of Qaeda’s north Africa affiliate urged Muslims worldwide to attack French interests in retaliation for France’s military intervention in Mali, in a video recorded last month and posted online. There are an estimated 30,000 French citizens living in Tunisia.

(Source / 07.05.2013)

A young jobless man set himself ablaze and was seriously wounded on Sunday in front of the town hall of Sidi Bouzid, birthplace of Tunisia’s 2011 revolution, witnesses said.

Brahim Slimani, 23, doused himself with petrol and set himself alight in front of the closed town hall, to the alarm of passers-by who rushed to his rescue.

He was taken to the local hospital where doctors said he had third degree burns over three-quarters of his body.

Witnesses said the man did not utter a word before his action but a friend told AFP that he was unemployed and living in poverty.

The number of people committing suicide or trying to take their own lives has multiplied since a young Tunisian street vendor set himself on fire on December 17, 2010, in a drastic act of protest against police harassment.

Mohamed Bouazizi’s death ignited a mass uprising that toppled ex-dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali the following month and touched off the Arab Spring.

Limited economic prospects, especially in the neglected interior, were key factors behind Tunisia’s revolution. Two years on, nearly a quarter of the population lives in poverty, with unemployment at around 18 percent.

(Source / 28.04.2013)