Zine El Abidine Ben Ali

Zine El Abidine Ben Ali (زين العابدين بن علي, Tunisian Arabic: Zīn il-ʿĀbidīn bin ʿAlī; 3 September 1936 – 19 September 2019), commonly known as Ben Ali (بن علي) or Ezzine (الزين), was a Tunisian politician who served as the second president of Tunisia from 1987 to 2011.

In that year, during the Tunisian revolution, he was overthrown and fled to Saudi Arabia.

Ben Ali was born in 1936 to moderate-income parents as the fourth of eleven children in the family.

His father worked as a guard at the port city of Sousse.

Ben Ali joined the local resistance against French colonial forces and was imprisoned.

His expulsion from secondary school was the reason why he never completed his secondary education.

He studied at the Sousse Technical Institute but failed to earn a professional certificate and joined the newly formed Tunisian Army in 1958.

Nevertheless, after being chosen as one of a group of young officers, he was awarded training in France at the École Spéciale Militaire de Saint-Cyr in Coëtquidan and the School of Applied Artillery in Châlons-sur-Marne, and also in the United States at the Senior Intelligence School in Maryland and the School for Anti-Aircraft Field Artillery in Texas.

He also held a diploma in electronics engineering from a local university.

Returning to Tunisia in 1964, he began his professional military career the same year as a Tunisian staff officer.

During his time in military service, he established the Military Security Department and directed its operations for 10 years.

He also served as the military intelligence chief from 1964 to 1974 and later Director General of national security between December 1977 and 1980 until he was appointed as Minister of Defense.

He briefly served as military attaché in the Tunisian embassy of Morocco and Spain before being appointed General Director of National Security in 1977.

In April 1980, Ben Ali was appointed ambassador to Poland, and served in that position for four years.

Soon after the Tunisian bread riots in January 1984, he was reappointed director-general of national security.

Ben Ali subsequently served as Minister of State in charge of the interior before being appointed Interior Minister on 28 April 1986 then Prime Minister by President Habib Bourguiba in October 1987.

Ben Ali was appointed Prime Minister in October 1987.

He assumed the Presidency on 7 November 1987 in a bloodless coup d'état that ousted President Habib Bourguiba by declaring him incompetent.

Ben Ali led an authoritarian regime.

On the morning of 7 November 1987, doctors attending to President Bourguiba filed an official medical report declaring him medically incapacitated and unable to fulfill the duties of the presidency.

Ben Ali, next in line to the presidency, removed Bourguiba from office and assumed the presidency himself.

The day of his accession to power was celebrated annually in Tunisia as New Era Day.

Two of the names given to Ben Ali's rise to the presidency include "the medical coup d'état" and the "Tunisian revolution".

Ben Ali favoured the latter.

Ben Ali’s assumption of the presidency was in conformity with Article 57 of the Tunisian Constitution.

The country had faced 10% inflation, external debt accounting for 46% of GDP and a debt service ratio of 21% of GDP.

In 1999, Fulvio Martini, former head of Italian military secret service SISMI, declared to a parliamentary committee that "from 1985 to 1987, we organized a coup of sorts in Tunisia, putting president Ben Ali as head of state, replacing Bourguiba who wanted to flee".

Bourguiba, although a symbol of anti-colonial resistance, was considered incapable of leading his country any longer, and his reaction to the rising Islamic integrism was deemed "a bit too energetic" by Martini; Bourguiba's threat to execute the suspects might have generated strong negative responses in neighbouring countries.

Acting under directives from Italian Prime Minister Bettino Craxi and Foreign Minister Giulio Andreotti, Martini claims to have brokered the accord that led to the peaceful transition of powers.

According to Martini, the SISMI did not have an operational role in Ben Ali's rise to power, but organised a move to support his new government politically and economically, preventing Tunisia from falling into an open confrontation with fundamentalists, as happened in Algeria in the following years.

Alan Cowell, a prominent New York Times journalist, believed Ben Ali's initial promises of a more democratic way of ruling the country than had prevailed under Bourguiba.

One of his first acts upon taking office was to loosen restrictions on the press; for the first time state-controlled newspapers published statements from the opposition.

Ben Ali also released some political prisoners and granted them with pardons.

He was reelected in several non-democratic elections where he won with enormous majorities, each time exceeding 90% of the vote; his final re-election coming on 25 October 2009.

On 14 January 2011, following a month of protests against his rule, he fled to Saudi Arabia along with his wife Leïla Ben Ali and their three children.

The interim Tunisian government asked Interpol to issue an international arrest warrant, charging him with money laundering and drug trafficking.

A Tunisian court sentenced Ben Ali and his wife in absentia to 35 years in prison on 20 June 2011 on charges of theft and unlawful possession of cash and jewelry, which was put up for auction.

In June 2012, a Tunisian court sentenced him in absentia to life imprisonment for inciting violence and murder and another life sentence by a military court in April 2013 for violent repression of protests in Sfax.

He served none of those sentences, subsequently dying in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on 19 September 2019 at the age of 83 after nearly a decade in exile.

Ben Ali was the penultimate surviving leader deposed in the Arab Spring; he was survived by Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, the latter dying in February 2020.