With his fleet of luxury cars, flashy lifestyle, profits from smuggling, drug dealing and terrorism and an uncanny knack for escaping capture, Tunisian criminal, Hussein Moez, had earned the nickname “Lord of the Borders. But recently his life of crime came to an abrupt end, when Tunisian security forces surrounded the smuggler in his home in Ben Qardan on the Tunisian-Libyan border and, left with no alternative, he shot himself in the head.

With his fleet of luxury cars, flashy lifestyle, profits from smuggling, drug dealing and terrorism and an uncanny knack for escaping capture, Tunisian criminal, Hussein Moez, had earned the nickname “Lord of the Borders. But recently his life of crime came to an abrupt end, when Tunisian security forces surrounded the smuggler in his home in Ben Qardan on the Tunisian-Libyan border and, left with no alternative, he shot himself in the head.

After the Tunisian revolution, Moez became the leader of the most powerful smuggling network operating between Tunisia and Libya. Previous to the revolution, Moez had been serving a prison sentence for smuggling drugs; however the disruption caused by the revolution allowed him to escape. But he came out of prison changed – according to those who knew him in his hometown, while in prison he was particularly attracted to religious extremists.

Makki Hilal, a local journalist, was Moez’ childhood friend. He recalls how Moez, who was a quiet and pleasant man, worked as a mechanic before turning to smuggling. The fact that his job didn’t pay much and he wasn’t well educated was what caused him to turn to smuggling, Hilal believes.

Drawn to extremists while in prison

In 2005 Moez was arrested and imprisoned for drug smuggling; he was given a 30-year sentence. After almost five years in Sfax Prison though, he managed to escape in 2011. And by this time he had become extremely religious, a Salafist.

At this stage, Moez was able to take advantage of the collapse of security forces after the fall of the former Tunisian government as well as the outbreak of the Libyan revolution, to start smuggling truckloads of weapons into Tunisia, where they were distributed to extremists. Moez’ knowledge of back roads and smuggling routes allowed him to escape the authorities continuously and his connections with extremist groups allowed him to control the town of Ben Qardan.

Now the owner of a fleet of luxury cars and motorcycles and two ambulances, Moez earned his nickname, “Lord of the Borders”. He would even post pictures of himself posing heroically with the 4WD vehicles he used for smuggling on social media.

Many local families work in smuggling, but not terrorism

He smuggled drugs, weapons and some say he was even involved in recruiting young men to fight in Iraq, Syria and Libya. Some members of the security forces say Moez was also involved in supplying the perpetrators of the latest terrorist attacks in Tunisia – in the holiday resort of Sousse and at Bardo Museum in Tunis – with weapons. Yet other people in his hometown who know him deny this; they say he had nothing to do with terrorists.

In fact, Moez’ grisly end by suicide in his own home has seen activists in Ben Qardan launch a campaign where they are calling upon the Tunisian government to carefully differentiate between the practice of smuggling and terrorism. After all a lot of the families in the town make a living from smuggling ordinary goods, not necessarily weapons and drugs, over the nearby border. The business allows them a decent income when there is high unemployment. Ben Qardan locals called upon their government to develop the area so that their unemployed young men living here would not be drawn to smuggling, or to extremism.