Tunisia: 12 held in resort attack probe

Student attacker trained in a Libyan terrorist camp

About 12 people have been detained in the investigation into a massacre at a beach resort that killed 38 people, mostly British tourists, a Tunisian official said.

Tunisia’s Radio Mosaique reported yesterday that Lazhar Akremi, a senior official with the ruling Nida Tunis party, made the announcement at a party meeting. The report did not elaborate on when or where the arrests occurred.

The Tunisian government held a news conference yesterday morning in the capital Tunis about the investigation. Daesh claimed responsibility for Friday’s attack, in which Tunisian student Saif Al Deen Rezgui opened fire on a beach in the resort of Sousse. The attacker was later killed by police.

Investigators are searching nationwide for accomplices. A person close to the investigation said on Monday that seven people had been detained in the probe.

At least 27 Britons and other European tourists are confirmed among the dead.

A top security official told the AP this week that the student had trained in a terrorist camp in Libya at the same time as the two men who attacked a leading Tunisian museum in March. That enforced the notion of a link between the two assaults and raised fears of more attacks on this North African nation’s budding democracy.

The attack was Tunisia’s deadliest ever, and threatened to be a devastating blow to the country’s tourism sector, which is crucial to the economy and had just started recovering after uncertainty following Arab Spring uprisings.

Increased police powers

Despite having so much at stake, the shocking slayings of 22 tourists at the national museum in March failed to persuade lawmakers to resolve their debate over an anti-terror strategy proposed more than a year earlier. Only now — after a single terrorist from a gritty Tunisian town was able to kill 38 tourists at a seaside resort — does the government appear ready to launch a comprehensive response.

A new anti-terrorism law passed on June 24 increases police powers and provide for harsher penalties. It also would create a commission to devise a strategy to tackle the roots of terrorism by addressing terror’s economic and social causes, and creating “de-radicalisation” centres to change minds through persuasion, not prison.