Tunisian President Kais Saied has denied any allegations of state anti-Semitism after a policeman carried out a deadly shooting outside a synagogue on the island of Djerba, in the attack on Tuesday night.
During the attack, three police officers and two visitors, one of whom had dual Tunisian and Israeli nationalities, and the other a French Tunisian, were killed by the attacker’s bullets, before the security forces shot him dead.
The Tunisian authorities condemned the “criminal” attack, but refrained from describing it as “terrorism” or giving it an anti-Semitic dimension.
But in France, of which one of the victims holds the nationality, the National Prosecutor’s Office for Combating Terrorism opened on Wednesday “an investigation for murder in connection with a terrorist group.”
On Wednesday, French President Emmanuel Macron vowed to combat “anti-Semitism,” saying, “Always, tirelessly, we will fight anti-Semitism.”
Macron added in a tweet, “The attack on the Ghriba synagogue worries us. We think painfully of the victims, of the Tunisian people, of our friends. We stand by the family of our citizen who was killed.”
During a meeting with Prime Minister Naglaa Boudin and a number of ministers, Kais Saied stressed that Tunisia “will remain secure despite the desperate attempts to undermine its stability,” according to a statement issued by the Presidency of the Republic.
The Tunisian president thanked the countries “that declared their sympathy with the Tunisian people” after the attack, but stressed “the rejection of any foreign interference because the sovereignty of Tunisia and the sovereignty of the people inside the homeland are two lines that no party can cross.”
He also expressed his “astonishment” at “the positions in which accusations of anti-Semitism were made against Tunisia,” without specifying a specific party.
In support of his statements, he referred to legal texts guaranteeing freedom of worship and the rights of minorities in Tunisia, particularly Jews.
The visit of Ghriba is considered to be at the heart of the traditions of Tunisian Jews, who number only 1,500, compared to 100 before independence in 1956.
In 2002, the same synagogue was targeted by a suicide truck bomb attack that killed 21 people and was claimed by Al Qaeda.
It is noteworthy that hundreds of Jews have completed the annual visit to the Ghriba synagogue, which is the oldest in Africa.
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