As Tunisia grappled with continued threats of political violence and with citizens still shaken by the assassinations of opposition politicians Chokri Belaïd and Mohammed Brahmi, Interior Minister Lotfi Ben Jeddo cited a culprit last week.

As Tunisia grappled with continued threats of political violence and with citizens still shaken by the assassinations of opposition politicians Chokri Belaïd and Mohammed Brahmi, Interior Minister Lotfi Ben Jeddo cited a culprit last week.

“The Tunisian people only knew about the preaching activities associated with Ansar al-Sharia,” Ben Jeddo said. “They do not know about the dark side to this terrorist organization. Ansar al-Sharia is a terrorist organization with a military wing that seeks to control power by force. There is a close link between Ansar al-Sharia and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.”

In a press conference held last week, Interior Minister Lotfi Ben Jeddo said the Interior Ministry confirmed the direct involvement of Ansar al-Sharia in the assassination of Chokri Belaid in February 2013 and Mohammed Brahmi in July 2013, in addition to its involvement in the killing of eight soldiers in the al-Shaanbi Mountains and the mutilation of their bodies, also in July 2012.   

No consensus within Ennahda

Leading Ennahda member El-Sadeq Chourou, however, sympathized with the Ansar al-Sharia organization following the Interior Ministry announcement and insisted that Ansar al-Sharia was “infiltrated by international intelligence agencies, corrupt political money and the remnants of Ben Ali’s regime. All these parties have implanted their arms within this organization to carry out political assassinations in order to implicate it.”

According to Chourou, categorizing Ansar al-Sharia as a terrorist group is a “hasty and incorrect” decision.  He asserted that there are infiltrators in the organization with the aim of discrediting the organization and eradicating it from the national scene.

Chourou, nicknamed ”the 20-year prisoner,” because of his long detention, and who is described as one of the hawks of the Ennahda Movement, denounced the prosecution of Ansar al-Sharia leaders a few months ago, saying ”the campaign against this stream is supported by the International Monetary Fund the same way it did to the Ennahda Movement in the 1990’s, at the beginning of the Ben Ali’s rule.”

Ajmi Lourimi, another leading member of the Ennahda movement, supported the stance of Chourou and was explicit about his opposition of Prime Minister Ali Laarayedh’s announcement. Commenting on the prime minister’s decision, Lourimi said that he does not expect the approval of the Ennahda  government of categorizing Ansar al-Sharia as a terrorist organization.

The media office of the Ennahda movement considered that all Ennahda members who oppose Ennahda’s listing of Ansar al-Sharia as a terrorist organization were expressing their own “personal opinions”. It also stressed that Ennahda would issue a statement to clarify its position.  However, until now no such statement has been issued. 

Naguib Al-Gharbi‎, the head of Ennahda’s media office, said that the issue did not require an official stance by the movement. This has made observers interpret the statement, saying that the sensitivity of this issue has made Ennhada avoid talking about it, especially after the accusations that there are relations between the Ennahda leaders and this extremist religious organization.

Aliya al-Alani, a political analyst and a researcher specialized in Islamic movements said that disagreement in the method of managing conflicts and divisions within Ennahda is not new and it is expected to witness more crystallization because there are two streams within Ennahda who have many conflicts. Among these conflicts are their stances, with regard to religious extremist streams in the country, especially if there is a stream that has a secular perspective in addressing the different issues.

Accusations and refutations

Accusations of links between the extremist Ansar al-Sharia organization and some Ennahda leaders, who are often described as being extremists, are not new. These accusations started when violent acts were associated with this stream. However, when Ansar al-Sharia was categorized as a terrorist organization, the issue became a very sensitive and dangerous one.

The Union of Republican Security Forces, one of the security unions in the country, revealed the affiliation of Hisham Laarayedh, a member of the Ennahda Shura Council, and the son of Ali Laarayedh, the prime minister, with Ansar al-Sharia. It announced that there are relations between some members of the Ennahda party leaders, especially those who are members of the NCA, with Ansar al-Sharia.

”Everyone knows that Hisham Laarayedh was one of the supporters of the Manouba College sit-in (a sit-in to defend the right of women to wear a niqab in the classroom), which was organized by leading figures and members of Ansar al-Sharia,” said Walid Zarrouk, a member of the Union. “The support of Ali Laarayedh’s son for the illegal sit-ins at that time prevented the dispersing of demonstrators on two occasions, when his father was the interior minister.”

The security unionist said that “many leaders of the Ennahda Movement have ties with Ansar al Sharia, such as Sadeq Chourou and Habib Ellouz, who attended the first conference of the organization and who also stepped up to the podium reserved for the organization’s leaders, as well as Noureddine Alkhadami, the minister of religious affairs, who did not lift a finger to confront the control of Ansar al-Sharia members over more than one hundred and fifty mosques.

For his part, human rights activist and lawyer Nizar al-Senussi, called for investigations with the Prime Minister Ali Laarayedh himself because he allowed, when he was the interior minister, Saifullah bin Hussein, the leader of the organization (nickname “Abu Ayyad), to escape from the security forces, which besieged him in one of the mosques in the capital city in September 2012 following the storming of the US Embassy that took place in the same month.

In response to these accusations, Ennahda Movement was quick to deny the affiliation of Hisham Laarayedh, one of its leaders, with Ansar al-Sharia. Hisham Laarayedh announced that he will file a lawsuit against those who accused him of being a member of this hard line religious stream. 

In an official statement, Ennahda said that “this is not true and baseless,” adding that “Ennahda cannot accept within its structures members who have affiliations with other organizations or parties.” The statement went on saying that “there is no evidence in support of this rumour.”

The interior will not cover-up any person

After the statements made by the security union and Ennahda, the official spokesman of the interior ministry stressed: “The ministry will not cover-up any party involved in terrorism, regardless of his status or his political or ideological affiliation.”

To confirm news on the relations between the two sides, some of the social networking sites posted video clips of the Ansar al-Sharia meetings, which were attended by some of the Ennahda Movement leaders, such as Chourou and Habib Ellouz, members of National League for the Protection of the Revolution close to the ruling troika and Abdul-Raouf al-Ayadi, the President of the al-Wafaa Movement dissident of the Congress for the Republic Party, one of the ruling troika parties. 

It should be noted that, Abu Ayyad, the founder and leader of Ansar al-Sharia, has said in an interview that he met the President of Ennahda Movement Rached Ghannouchi. In this meeting, Ghannouchi allegedly tried to convince Ayyad of the importance of conducting his political activism in the framework of the law. He denied meeting with him after his disappearance.

Ansar al-Sharia appeared in Tunisia after the revolution, particularly during the month of May 2011, under the leadership of Abu Ayyad, who fought in Afghanistan and Iraq before being arrested in 2003 in Turkey and extradited to Ben Ali’s regime. Ayyad stood trial and was  imprisoned, but his sentence was cut short and he was released by the general legislative amnesty granted to political prisoners after the revolution. It was then that he started to continue his political activism.