Algeria ramps up security measures along its eastern borders to preclude terrorists’ infiltration from Tunisia

Fear of renewed terrorist violence and instability in Tunisia has motivated greater security cooperation between Algeria and its eastern neighbor.

“The close cooperation and timely exchange of information on the border between Algeria and Tunisia and Libya is excellent and wards off problems of a new upsurge of terrorism, organized crime, and smuggling, particularly of weapons,” Tunisian Prime Minister Youcef Chahed has told of late media outlets.

Returning Tunisian terrorists will be immediately arrested and judged under anti-terrorism laws, the Premier said, seeking to calm fears over the homecoming of some of the country’s several thousand extremists linked to terror organizations. 

Tunisia is among the countries with the highest per capita number of terrorists fighting in Iraq, Libya and Syria, a problem linked to widespread radicalization among disillusioned youth and a loosening of security controls after Tunisia’s 2011 popular uprising. 

More than 3,000 Tunisians are known to have travelled abroad to wage a so-called fake “jihad”, according to the interior ministry. Last week, the interior minister said 800 had already come back to Tunisia, without giving details on what had happened after their return. 

To this effect, Mr Youssef Chahed  was more explicit on the issue and underlined that returnees would be dealt with according to a 2015 anti-terrorism law that is designed to ease the arrest and prosecution of suspected terrorists. 

“Those who come back will be arrested immediately after their arrival on Tunisian soil and will be judged under the anti-terrorism law,” Mr Chahed told state TV late on Thursday. 

He also said authorities had comprehensive records on the terrorists who had left the country. “We have all the details on them, we know them one by one, and we have taken all the necessary measures,” he said. 

In a reaction and in order to face up to any adverse contingency, Algeria has decided to bolster even further its military presence along the border with neighboring Tunisia owing to the latest developments in Tunisia itself.

With the declared intention of the Tunisian higher authorities to arrest and put in trial the returning terrorists, the Algerian security services and the ANP forces have ramped up their surveillance operations along the common border in order to preclude any possible infiltration into Algerian soil of terrorists who want to extricate themselves from Tunisian law and justice.

The comments by PM Chahed, a member of the ruling “Nidaa Tounes” party, came amid a fierce political debate in Tunisia over how to deal with these “foreign extremist fighters”. 

Some Tunisian politicians have called for them to be stripped of their nationality, though the right to citizenship is protected under the country’s constitution.