Malfunctions in the Counter- Terrorism Strategy: The case of the attack on the home of the Minister of the Interior, Lotfi Ben Jeddou of a terrorist
The attack on the home of Lotfi Ben Jeddou, the Minister of the Interior speaks volumes about the organic and structural dysfunctions of the State institutions in the face of terrorism, a core issue at the national, regional and international levels. Underlying the narrative of the tragic events reported here based on the documents, minutes, telegrams, recordings and reports prepared by the various National Security departments, is the profile of a man, the Minister of the Interior, Lotfi Ben Jeddou, a judge well established in Kasserine, his native city located on the Algerian border and notorious for all forms of trafficking. A city that has over the last two decades turned into a stronghold of Tunisian terrorism. The upheaval wrought by the January 14, 2020 Tunisian Revolution propelled Lotfi Ben Jeddou to greater prominence on the political scene, a career promotion that is typical of the personalities close to Nahdha, the Islamist ruling party. Did this party have the intention, as some argued, to appoint him as head of government to take back control of the executive, then run by a government of technocrats, thus offering him a martyr’s halo? This assumption cannot be overlooked in the context of the heavy atmosphere dominated by the political assassinations of 2013. Except that if, as this account of the attack on the home of the Minister of the Interior shows, it ispossible to manipulate with impunityand ad infinitum the scale of command of services as sensitive as those dedicated to fight terrorism, the price to be paid then would grow increasingly higher. If tampering with services as crucial as those dedicated to state security aimed to serve the political ambition of some political parties, the ensuing malfunctioning has clearedthe way, as this story shows, for terrorism, a new player in town, to achieve remarkable successes and to establish itself as an inescapable fact in today’s Tunisia.
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