TUNISIAN OFFICIALS DEMAND ANSWERS OVER PURPORTED ENNAHDA HIT SQUAD
▶ Party denies claims that it ran a secret group that spied on opponents and assassinated two left-wing politicians
Tunisian MPs and lawyers are pressuring the country’s interior and justice ministries to release documents that suggest the Ennahda party ran a secret unit that assassinated two leftwing opponents in 2013.
Their comments yesterday came as parliamentarians met to discuss reports accusing Ennahda of having a covert organisation that ran parallel to party structures, gathering intelligence on political opponents.
The accusations, made by a group linked to the secular leftwing Popular Front coalition, have deepened mistrust of the party before Tunisia’s presidential and parliamentary elections scheduled for next year.
The charges have also revived interest in Ennahda’s possible responsibility for political assassinations that sparked widespread protests against the movement nearly six years ago.
Mohammed Brahmi, a Popular Front MP and a vocal critic of Ennahda – which came to power after the 2011 overthrow of Tunisia’s autocratic leader Zine El Abidine Ben Ali – was assassinated in 2013.
The murder came almost six months after Chokri Belaid, a left-wing lawyer and Popular Front member, was assassinated by hardliners.
Tunisia’s Interior Ministry, controlled by Ennahda at the time, identified several Salafists as suspects in both murders.
It linked them to the Ansar Al Sharia group – the most radical organisation to emerge in Tunisia since Mr Ben Ali was toppled.
But last month, an independent investigative commission made up of lawyers with links to the Popular Front, said it had evidence linking Ennahda to a sprawling “secret organisation” that it believed was behind the murders.
Ridha Raddaoui, a spokesman for the Belaid and Brahmi Defence Commission, said that his team had drafted a 200page report linking Rached Ghannouchi, the head of Ennahda, and Noureddine Bhiri, the leader of its parliamentary bloc, to the covert group they say wanted to entrench the party’s control over the country.
The report, the commission said, was compiled mostly of official case documents that were buried in the Interior Ministry, in an area they called the “black room”.
These documents, which they said included evidence of the secret organisation’s operations, did not implicate Ennahda.
But Mr Raddaoui said he had evidence that the two senior Ennahda figures had direct and regular contact with Mustapha Khedher, who, they say, led the secret group that also spied on the military, state officials, foreign diplomats and embassies.
Khedher, who was a personal aide to the interior minister in 2013, is a former soldier involved in the 1991 coup against Mr Ben Ali.
In 2015, he was sentenced to eight years in prison for fabricating and stealing official documents.
Mr Raddaoui said a trove of documents concerning the murders of Belaid and Brahmi were among those Khedher buried on orders from Ennahda’s leadership.
Those same documents ended up in the interior ministry, without being submitted to judicial bodies investigating the murders, the commission claims.
It also said it believed Khedher, who is accused of employing 400 intelligence agents, was behind the assassinations, claiming he had direct links to suspects in the murders.
Ennahda has rejected all accusations.
During yesterday’s parliamentary session, Tunisia’s new Interior Minister Hichem Fourati, denied claims the documents had been kept from the judiciary and said his ministry had never denied having them.
Mr Fourati avoided commenting on the contents of the documents.
Instead, he took issue with the use of the term “black room” to describe the section of the archives department in which they were stored, because the term suggested that they were kept hidden.
Ahmed Sadiq, leader of the Popular Front’s parliamentary bloc, accused Mr Fourati of distracting the public from the topic at hand by taking issue with the term rather than addressing the accusations.
Meanwhile, Fatima Al Masdi, a parliamentarian representing the ruling Nidaa Tounes party, called on the Interior Minister to disclose the contents of the court documents.
Ms Al Masdi said that Parliament should sanction the Ennahda party if concrete evidence was presented incriminating it in the formation of a secret unit.
Mr Raddaoui yesterday threatened to release the documents if the justice and interior ministries failed to disclose their contents to the public.
“The Justice Ministry will have to reveal all the details of the case and the contents of the documents or the Tunisian public will be given ownership of the documents,” he said.