Tunisia attack: security officials to brief European ambassadors

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/28/tunisia-attack-security-officials-european-ambassadors

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Tunisian security officials will brief European ambassadors on Tuesday about their plans to combat terrorism in the country following the killing of 38 tourists at the Imperial Marhaba hotel on Friday.

Armed police in black jumpsuits patrolled the beaches of Sousse on Sunday with the country’s interior minister due to visit the site in the afternoon.

The government has previously been criticised for its response to Tunisia’s last major attack on tourists, in March, when two gunmen massacred 22 people at the Bardo museum in the capital, Tunis. Police quickly arrested 23 suspects, announcing the break-up of the Islamic State-affiliated terrorist cell, Okbaa Ibn Nafaa, which was blamed for the killings.

But three months on, none of the Bardo suspects has come to trial and the hunt for accomplices has petered out. The security blanket thrown over the country at the time has gone, to the point where there were no armed police near the Marhaba, despite its position amid a sprawl of hotels holding thousands of vulnerable tourists.

As with the Bardo attack, special forces sped to the scene of the Marhaba killings, their efficiency praised by survivors, but Tunisia has too few such units to prevent such attacks.

Officials say they are well aware of the terrorist rationale: with the government itself well protected, terrorists concentrate on its weak underbelly, the fragile economy.

Thousands of visitors have already scrambled on to extra flights laid on by tour companies and more may follow, further damaging Tunisia’s tourism industry, one of the few success stories of Tunisia’s troubled economy. Said Aidi, the health minister, surveying the blood-stained marble foyer of the Marhaba, said the government was focused on the challenge. “We know what they [the terrorists] want,” he said. “They want to make people not come to Tunisia.”

Tourism accounts for 400,000 jobs in a country with high employment. If the industry collapses, experts fear more desperate young men may flock to jihadist ranks.

Related: Tunisia beach attack: the victims

In the aftermath of the Marhaba attack, government reaction was swift. A ban was instituted on flights out of the country by anyone under 35, in response to reports that up to 3,000 Tunisians are being trained by Islamic State in Iraq, Syria and Libya. Prime minister Habib Essid also closed about 80 mosques outside government control, after reports that the Marhaba gunman Seifeddine Rezgui was tutored by a preacher in his home town of Gaafour.

Tunisian officials are likely to use Tuesday’s meeting with EU ambassadors to ask for more intelligence-sharing, combined with specialised electronic monitoring equipment.

“There is no easy win against terrorists, Tunisia will be pursuing a cocktail of solutions,” said one London-based security expert. “The flight ban is a good start, so is the crackdown on [radical] preachers. But at the end of the day it’s all about containment.”

Meanwhile, parliament is expected to push forward with a new anti-terrorism law giving police extensive powers of arrest, a concern for rights groups who fear the country’s new democracy may be imperiled.

Tunisian officials say the problem is that it is caught in a regional vortex, with jihadist conflicts in neighbouring Algeria and Libya spilling over its borders. The army is fighting a cat-and-mouse battle with jihadists criss-crossing Tunisian territory, but there are too many smuggling routes and too few soldiers.

“The terrorism is not only in Tunisia, it is in France, it is in other countries,” said Aidi. “This is an international issue.”