Ennahda’s secret apparatus: Weapon to terrorize Tunisian people

Mahmoud al-Batakoushi

Ever since Hassan al-Banna laid the rotten seed of the Brotherhood, terrorism has been made by them and killing has been their way of life. They are only good at clandestine work, as the banned group has been carrying out organized assassinations to intimidate those who differ from it, perhaps the most prominent of which was the assassination of Egyptian Prime Minister Mahmoud el-Nokrashy Pasha and the Egyptian judge Ahmed al-Khazindar in 1948 at the hands of Abdul Rahman al-Sindi, the leader of the armed wing of the Brotherhood, which has not given up its terrorism even when it came to power, either in Egypt or Tunisia.

Physical evidence of Brotherhood penetration

The Ennahda movement, which the Tunisian people expelled in support of the decisions of President Kais Saied, who delivered the state from the rule of the terrorist group that had taken power following the overthrow of former President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, was dependent on an armed secret wing called the secret apparatus, consisting of 21,000 elements who succeeded in penetrating state institutions under the general legislative amnesty law and took positions in sensitive institutions such as the Data Integration Department of the National Media Center, which is at the heart of the electoral system in Tunisia, along with the central control offices of all ministries and public institutions, according to the investigations of the Dark Room, which represent a summary of security work and contain hundreds of material clues that show the extent of the secret organization’s penetration of Ennahda in the country and the link of this apparatus to the international Brotherhood organization, as they controlled the messages of the Tunisian government.

The best evidence of this is that the Ministry of Commerce was forced in the summer of 2018 to change the staff of the Central Control Office when it discovered that the ministry’s mail was automatically directed to the Ennahda headquarters in district of Montplaisir in the capital, before the minister and the state secretary were informed of it.

Former Interior Minister Lotfi Ben Jeddou said that Ennahda possesses listening devices that exceed the capabilities of the army and security services in Tunisia, including equipment disguised as suitcases capable of capturing 4,000 calls at the same time, usually traveling in closed cars.

Ennahda’s secret apparatus was involved in the assassination of Tunisian politician Chokri Belaid on February 6, 2013, as he was preparing to leave his home in the state of Ariana. He was hit by four bullets, including one in the head, one in the neck, and two in the chest, which was done on direct orders from Ennahda leader Rached Ghannouchi.

The investigations of the Dark Room were based on documents seized at the home of former officer Mustafa Khader, one of the leaders of the secret apparatus, which include detailed lists of thousands of deviants and shows that there has been extensive recruitment of deviants to as leaders of the organization.

Khader is considered a main suspect in the killing of Mohamed Brahmi, as he was responsible for the private mail of then-Interior Minister Ali Laarayedh, who concealed the escape of Ansar al-Sharia leader Abu Ayyad after Ghannouchi ordered Laarayedh to withdraw the raiding forces. He then appeared after a while in Libya. As for Boubaker el-Hakim, he left for the Syrian city of Raqqa, where he was later killed in an American strike in 2016.

Cluster structure

The underground organization acquires a cluster structure not unlike that of the mafia by imposing monthly royalties on petty trade of 2,000 dinars, and it runs armies of informants consisting of deviants and petty merchants who have received financial aid.

It is noteworthy that the Tunisian Public Prosecution announced earlier the opening of an investigation into information that Ennahda possessed a secret security apparatus parallel to the state. This apparatus was accused of being involved in the assassination of opposition politicians Brahmi and Belaid, and it also tried to hack a number of embassies in Tunisia, including the American and Algerian embassies. The secret apparatus had previously provided its members with training on espionage tactics and methods of using techniques for information and encryption.