Hapless Tunisian businessman woefully victimized under Ben Ali's repressive rule relates his mishaps to Echorouk (Part 2)
Ghazi Melouli, a Tunisian businessman who owned several firms in Tunisia was an associate of part of his business ventures with the brother of the ousted President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. But after the unexpected demise of Moncef Ben Ali, his former business partner, Ghazi Melouli was mercilessly stripped of all his belongings and sent to prison by deposed President Ben Ali at the prodding of his insidious wife Leila Trabelsi and her family.
- This hapless Tunisian businessman who now lives in exile in Paris also narrowly escaped an assassination attempt sectretly ordered by the Ben Ali regime in Tripoli two years ago. He was met this week in Paris by Echorouk’s correspondent Anouar Malek to whom he related his baffling story in an exclusive interview with Echorouk.
- Echorouk : You were sentenced by the ruthless Ben Ali regime to 8 years in prison but you came out of jail only after two years… How did this occur ?
- Ghazi Melouli : As a matter of fact, the legal affair in which I was forcibly involved was in its essence only one but the Ben Ali henchmen gave it several tracks in order to toughen the verdict to be passed by the tribunal against me through an obfuscation of the case. But this served me before the Tunisian Justice because the charges brought against me were slim and quite unsubstantial.
- It was patent that with the multifarious but trumped-up charges leveled against me, I couldn’t be in front of the magistrates innocent and guilty at the same time. With this blatant argument in my favour, I didn’t yield to this gross injustice and I embarked on more arduous legal proceedings which finally paved the way for a drastic lessening of the prison sentence passed against me.
- As a result, I spent only two years and three months in jail because of the schemings of the Ben Alis and Trabelsis and their allies who ruled the roost in every nook and corner of Tunisia.
- Echorouk : But why political charges and others including those related to terrorism were brought against you?
- Ghazi Melouli : The charges were fabricated according to the salient characteristics of the person. As I was a well – known businessman in Tunisia and elsewhere, the Ben Ali regime wanted to sully and to tarnish my reputation at all costs in a bid to prevent anyone including the human rights organizations from giving me a helping hand to get me out of my dire situation.
- Echorouk : Why didn’t you try to settle this case in other ways rather than before the courts which were then under the sway of the autocratic Ben Ali regime?
- Ghazi Melouli : I thought about this salutary option but the Ben Alis and the Trabelsis were adamant in their ferocious resolve to “destroy” me by sending me to jail for a very long period of time.
- My lawyers did everything possible to get me out of the lurch but to no avail.
- Echorouk : What did you witness in the Tunis jail?
- Ghazi Melouli : A lot of sufferings, torture and gross abuses of basic human rights. It was a hell-like situation. The detention conditions were appalling and unbearable. I luckily left this horrendous place in 2003.
- Echorouk : How did you manage your personal affairs after coming out of jail?
- Ghazi Melouli : I started building up again my bruised soul despite the fact that I had been stripped unjustly of all my possessions by the repressive Ben Ali regime.
- I falsely thought that after my imprisonment for more than two years, I would embark on a fresh career but I swiftly realized that the Ben Ali regime was still on my heels and I was subjected to more persecution and intimidation notably on the part of the head of the presidential security the sinister Ali Seriati who stripped me of my passport so as to prevent me from leaving Tunisia in addition to other constraints aimed at gagging me for good.
- Echorouk : How did you happen to leave Tunisia for a refuge in neighbouring Algeria?
- Ghazi Melouli : I left for Algeria on May 3rd 2007 at night with the help of a loyal friend who knows a lot of Algerians on the other side of the border. We used two cars for the crossing and I was warmly welcomed and taken care of by a generous and hospitable Algerian family.
- Echorouk: And what happened to you after securing a safe haven in Algeria?
- Ghazi Melouli: Afterwards, my friends took me to the western Algerian city of Oran within just 48 hours.
- I then took a direct flight from Oran to the French capital Paris where I have settled for the past few years.
- Some people operating in the inner-circle of the autocratic Ben Ali regime once got in touch with me, asking me to come back to Tunisia with no apprehension and at ease promising that that my case will be sealed for good because they were overtly afraid of seeing me talk to the French and International press in France about the dire persecution I had been subjected to in my own country for so many years by such a brutal and despotic regime embodied by ousted President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and his allies.