Answers sought for carnage
Survivors recall bloodbath as shooters’ kin blame brainwashing
With bullets flying and his heart pounding, Spanish tourist Josep Lluis Cusido never got a clear look at the Bardo museum shooters in Tunis as he hid behind a pillar. The only remarkable detail that struck him was the surprising youth of one of the attackers.
The man who stood just a few metres away was probably 20-year-old Yassine Laabidi — the younger of the two assailants.
“They looked to see how they could inflict the most damage possible. I saw one group in the museum who took refuge in a room ... They went in there and machine gunned them all down,’’ Mr Cusido, the mayor of the small Spanish town of Vallmoll, said on Saturday, stifling a sob.
On Wednesday morning, Laabidi left home for his job making deliveries for a local business, his father Arbi said outside the family’s home in the neighborhood El Omrane on the outskirts of Tunis.
Later that day he joined up with 26-yearold Hatem Khachnaoui and shot dead 21 people at the renowned museum, including a Tunisian security agent who had recently become a father, before being killed by security forces in a shootout.
In El Omrane, a poor neighborhood that has proved to be fertile ground for jihadi recruiters, a mourning tent has been erected in front of the Laabidi family’s home, where relatives are still trying to come to grips with the fate of the young man they said “liked the good life”.
“We want to know who transformed him, who brainwashed him so that he went to kill innocent people. We have to find the people sending our children to death and setting our country adrift,’’ said his brother, Khaled.
Anna Tounsia, a neighbour, said she mourns the loss of Laabidi as well as the victims of the attack.
“Yes, he killed. We’re sad for those who died, sad for the security agent who was killed and left a child,” she said. “Find the people who did this. Go to the mosques. Monitor them.”
Authorities said Laabidi and Khachnaoui slipped across the border to Libya in December to reach one of many militia training camps there. On Saturday, 20 other people linked to the attack were detained in Tunisia, prosecutors said.
Tunisia’s Interior Ministry also released security camera footage showing the gunmen walking through the museum, carrying assault rifles and bags.
At one point they encountered another man with a backpack walking down a flight of stairs. They briefly acknowledged each other before walking in opposite directions. There was no explanation of who the third man was.
One of the attackers wore a baseball cap and heavy jacket, while the other had on a red sweatshirt and tracksuit pants.
For Mr Cusido, who is now back in Spain, insomnia and headaches have become constant companions, as has the memory of the bullet-riddled woman he was unable to save.
“She’d been hit by bullets and I tried to help her but couldn’t and then ran to hide,” he said. “There are scenes I fear will remain in my head for a long time.”
Mr Cusido had just arrived at the museum with his wife and family when the gunmen came after him.
With bullets ricocheting off the stairs as he raced up, Mr Cusido barely reached the third floor, already crowded with visitors.
“I shouted ‘terrorists, terrorists’ and the shooters came in,” he said.
“Some people scattered, but others couldn’t and were killed right there. It was truly a massacre.”
Mr Cusido kept a bitter sense of humour about the ordeal as he described his attackers.
“From what little I saw, because I obviously wasn’t going to stop to take a selfie with them coming, the terrorists were young,” he said.
Like Mr Cusido, Americans Gillian Grant and Carol Calcagni, were also climbing the stairs and recalled a profound sense of terror and confusion.
“I saw someone hiding. I had no idea, you know? Is this a good person, a bad person”, Ms Grant said from Sidi Bou Said, a town about 20km from Tunis.
At one point, they peeked around a corner and saw armed men in black gesturing towards them.
“We had to make a decision. We didn’t know if they were the gunmen that had been shooting at everybody or if they were actually the police,” said Ms Calcagni, a retiree from Hilton Head, South Carolina, who was visiting her daughter who is a teacher in Tunis.
Both women insisted their affection for Tunisia had only grown since the attacks. As the women and other tourists were driven away from the museum after the attacks, their vehicles were surrounded by a cheering crowd.
“Hundreds and hundreds of Tunisians saying we support you, this is not what Tunisia is. All of us in the car were just so struck. It made such a great impression that these people came out in such numbers to give such love and support. We were bowled over,” Ms Grant said.
“What happened here could have happened in any country in the world. Not just Africa, not just Europe, not just the Middle East, but any country,” she said.
“It could have happened in the United States, it could have happened where I live and I’m not going to curtail anything because of it,’’ she added.