‘Black Rooms’: Documentary entangles Tunisia’s Brotherhood

Doaa Emam

For a year, Ennahda, the Tunisian arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, has avoided providing evidence of its leaders’ innocence of forming a secret apparatus. Similar the special regime established by Hassan al-Banna, the Brotherhood’s founder in the 1940s, both were involved in terrorist operations and assassinations of political opponents.

The movement has merely accused all those who open the file of political assassinations, especially the Committee for the Defense of the Martyrs Chokri Belaid and Mohamed Brahmi, which published documents proving Ennahda’s involvement. The Tunisian Brotherhood did not deny the charges against them, but were preoccupied with talking about conspiracies and defamation campaigns by opponents against Ennahda.

Ennahda issued a statement on Saturday evening, September 28 after an Arabic channel broadcast a documentary titled “Black Rooms” about the movement’s secret apparatus, declaring that its legal office began taking legal action to prosecute this channel for allegedly accusing the Tunisian Brotherhood and disturbing the electoral scene.

The movement stressed its rejection of what it called “external interference” in Tunisian national affairs, with the aim of destabilizing and distorting political actors and confusing the electoral process with a negative impact on the voter.

Tunisian researcher Ahmed Nazif, one of the participants in the documentary, published his testimony about the work presented by the channel Al-Arabiya, pointing out that the work on this documentary began last fall following the disclosure of the issue of the secret apparatus.

Nazif rebutted Ennahda’s accusations of external interference in Tunisian affairs, saying, “I was part of the work; the case is attractive to every journalist. The film is produced by a well-known Tunisian company and the investigation was carried out by Tunisian journalists (Mehdi Jlassi and Ahmed Nazif) and the Tunisian director Nidal al-Azim). There was no interference from any foreign or Arab party, neither in form nor in content.”

He added in a statement posted on his Facebook page that Tunisian channels refused to broadcast the film without giving reasons. Al-Arabiya agreed to broadcast it, but in a summarized 50-minute version.

The judiciary unfortunately refuses to open an investigation into the existence of a secret apparatus of the political party, Nazif said, adding that it tries to divide and dismantle the case and the issue of possession of secret state documents.