The Paris Court of Appeal rejected, on Wednesday, the request for extradition of Belhassen Trabelsi, brother-in-law of former President Zine el Abidine Ben Ali, to Tunisia. This decision confirms that rendered in 2021 by the Aix-en-Provence Court of Appeal, marking a new failure for the Tunisian authorities in their attempts to repatriate the most famous exile of the Ben Ali clan.
Paris invokes insufficient legal guarantees
According to defense lawyer, Me Marcel Ceccaldi, French justice “only applies the law” and ratifies the “systemic dysfunctions” of Tunisian justice. He believes that “Tunisia is not a state of law”, a recurring criticism brandished by the defense to contest the conditions of a fair trial in the defendant’s country of origin, French media reported.
Aged 63, Belhassen Trabelsi is being prosecuted in Tunisia in five economic and financial cases, for which he has already been sentenced in absentia to several years in prison. He is notably accused of illicit enrichment, embezzlement of public funds and money laundering.
A journey of exile and procedures
After the 2011 revolution, Belhassen Trabelsi fled Tunisia for Canada, where he tried to obtain political asylum – a request rejected by Ottawa in 2016. He then found refuge in France, where he was arrested in March 2019 and indicted for money laundering in an organized gang, receiving stolen property, use and complicity of false administrative documents.
In 2016, he began a reconciliation procedure with the Tunisian state with the Truth and Dignity Commission (IVD), offering to return one billion dinars (around 350 million euros) in exchange for an amicable settlement. But the arbitration never came to fruition.
Before the fall of the regime, the Ben Ali-Trabelsi family dominated large parts of the national economy. According to a World Bank study, the clan alone captured 21% of the profits of the Tunisian private sector in 2010, thanks to a network of companies and monopolies favored by those in power.
This new decision by the French courts risks rekindling the frustration of the Tunisian authorities, who have been struggling for years to obtain the restitution of assets and the return of emblematic figures of the former regime.
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