The collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, coupled with the “release” of prisoners from several detention centers, has raised significant concerns in Tunisia about the potential return of dozens of Tunisian citizens who fought alongside extremist groups in Syria in recent years. These individuals had either been captured by Assad’s regime or were stranded in cities and provinces that were under the control of various opposition forces. Official estimates in Tunisia indicate that around one thousand people, whose names are listed in the Tunisian Ministry of the Interior’s records, joined the combat zones in Syria since 2012.
The discrepancies in the numbers regarding the actual count of Tunisians who fought in Syria have further fueled fears about their possible return, either by infiltrating through neighboring borders or using forged identities via official crossings. The National Observatory for the Defense of the Civil State in Tunisia issued a statement warning of the “mass return of thousands of individuals who were sent to Syria with the help of Tunisian extremist Islamists.” The statement continued: “Now that they have been released from Syrian prisons, the Observatory urges the Tunisian authorities to exercise extreme caution regarding their return and to draw up prudent plans to deal with them, not only due to the violent extremism they represent to Tunisia’s civil state, but also because they may be tasked by colonial powers.”
Investigations by Tunisia’s security and judicial agencies reveal that several individuals involved in carrying out major terrorist attacks in Tunisia since the January 2011 revolution had joined ISIS, which controlled some Syrian cities such as Raqqa. Official inquiries have uncovered that some participants in planning the 2015 attack on the Bardo Museum in the heart of Tunis fled to Syria, along with several individuals involved in the bloody 2015 attack on the Imperial Hotel in Sousse, which resulted in the deaths of 40 people, mostly British tourists. In 2013, gunmen from the “Ansar al-Sharia” group, which was loyal to al-Qaeda before many of its leaders joined ISIS, killed political figures Chokri Belaid and Mohamed Brahmi. Investigations later revealed that several individuals involved in these crimes appeared in videos fighting alongside terrorist groups in Syria, including ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Hakim, who was killed in a U.S. airstrike in Raqqa in December 2016.
Additionally, the March 7, 2016, attack on the Tunisian city of Ben Guerdane, located on the border with Libya, which is classified as the largest terrorist attack Tunisia has faced in the past decade, also involved Tunisian extremists who fought in ISIS ranks in Syria. Subsequent investigations revealed that some of the attackers had received training in Syrian camps before returning to Libya, coinciding with the tightening of ISIS’s control over several Syrian cities since 2015.
In a previous statement before Parliament, former Tunisian Minister of the Interior, Hedi Majdoub, estimated that around 2,929 Tunisians were present in conflict zones. Since September 2022, Tunisian authorities have reopened investigations into the cases of individuals sent to fight in conflict zones in 2012 and 2013. These investigations have targeted several security officials, former ministers, businessmen, and politicians linked to the Ennahda movement. Over 100 individuals have been charged in connection with facilitating the travel of young people to fight with armed groups in Syria.
The investigations into this terrorist file began following a complaint filed by former parliamentarian and member of the investigation committee on travel networks, Fatima al-Massadi, in December 2021. The investigations revealed that the Ennahda movement, while in power, played a key role in facilitating the passage of terrorists from Carthage Airport, as well as training young people to use weapons in three centers belonging to the Ministry of the Interior. The judicial authorities are currently pursuing former Interior Minister and Prime Minister Ali Larayedh, along with Ennahda leader Rached Ghannouchi, prominent Ennahda figure Habib Louz, former parliamentarian and businessman Mohamed Fritah, and former security officials who held positions in the Ministry of the Interior during the Troika government led by Ennahda between 2011 and 2014.
