The Tunisian Ministry of Interior has broken up a terrorist cell that sends youth to hotbeds of militancy in Tajerouine town in Kef Governorate, 160 km northwest of Tunis. The ministry said that anti-terrorist security apparatuses have arrested two members of the cell and issued charges against them on “suspicion of joining a terrorist organization” in Libya and Syria.

 

The two suspects admitted to investigators that they have been coordinating with a takfiri element in a neighboring country and that they are linked to two Tunisian fugitive terrorists, according to official information.

Earlier this year, Tunisia set up a parliamentary commission of inquiry into sending youth to terrorist hotbeds and promised to reveal the parties facilitating the process of thousands of Tunisians joining extremist organizations.

In this context, Assistant Rapporteur Laila Shtewi said in a press statement that the committee will soon hear the testimony of a number of former ministers, who mainly functioned between 2012 and 2014, which witnessed the peak of activity by networks that sent Tunisian youth to areas of tension in Libya, Syria and Iraq.

Meanwhile, the Tunisian Interior Ministry said that it has arrested a takfiri element residing in Moknine following a tip-off on his whereabouts and after he was sentenced to prison in absentia.

The anti-terrorism unit in Monastir confirmed that the detainee was being pursued at the request of the Tunis Court of First Instance on charges of joining a terrorist organization, citing a three-year prison sentence for his participation in terrorist acts.

Notably, Tunisian security reports confirm that dozens of Tunisians have joined terrorist organizations in Syria and have passed through Libya, where they were trained to use weapons and make explosives.

Some have returned to Tunisia to commit terrorist acts such as the attack that was carried out by Jaber al-Khashnawi and Yassine al-Obeidi and targeted the Bardo National Museum on March 18, 2015 and Saifuddin Rizki’s attack in a tourist resort in Sousse on June 26, 2015.