Response to beach attack ‘shambolic’

THE Tunisian police response to the 2015 Sousse beach resort massacre was “at best shambolic, at worst cowardly”, the judge investigating the deaths of 30 Britons in the attack said yesterday.

“Their response could and should have been more effective,” Judge Nicholas Loraine-Smith said in his conclusions after a series of hearings that began in January.

“The response by the police was at best shambolic, at worst cowardly,” he said, adding that the hotel guards were not armed and had no walkie-talkies.

But he said there was no neglect by the tour operator TUI because the victims were not in a dependent position and there was nothing that the hotel might have done before the attack.

Gunman Seifeddine Rezgui killed 38 people, including 30 British tourists and three Irish citizens, in a shooting spree in June 2015 at the Riu Imperial Marhaba Hotel in Sousse, Tunisia.

The attack was claimed by the Islamic State jihadist group.

“The simple but tragic truth in this case is that a gunman armed with a gun and grenades went to that hotel intending to kill as many tourists as he could,” the judge said.

Loraine-Smith said all 30 British tourists were unlawfully killed.

The British inquest, which is in fact a series of individual inquests into the circumstances of death of each British citizen, is not a trial but the ruling could be used in civil lawsuits by some survivors and victims’ families.

Tunisia’s ambassador to Britain, Nabil Ammar, told BBC radio yesterday: “The police was not ready as it should be. A lot has changed now. Many improvements have been made in terms of security . . . in the whole country.”