Zine El Abidine Ben Ali

Biography

Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was born in 1936 near Sousse in French-ruled Tunisia. Expelled from secondary school after joining the anti-colonial resistance, he entered the new Tunisian army in 1958 and was trained in France at Saint-Cyr and the artillery school at Châlons, and in the United States in intelligence and air defence.

He headed military security from 1964 to 1974, served as a military attaché, and became director-general of national security in 1977. After a spell as ambassador to Poland from 1980 he returned to run national security following the 1984 bread riots, then rose to interior minister in 1986 and prime minister in October 1987.

On 7 November 1987 he removed the ageing President Habib Bourguiba by having doctors declare him unfit and took the presidency. Early liberalising gestures gave way to an authoritarian, heavily policed state: he renamed the ruling party the Democratic Constitutional Rally, won a series of elections with implausible majorities, and in 2002 changed the constitution to allow himself further terms.

In December 2010 protests over unemployment grew into a national uprising, and on 14 January 2011 he fled to Saudi Arabia, an event that set off the Arab Spring. Tunisian courts later sentenced him in absentia to long prison terms, including life sentences over the violent repression of protests. He died in exile in Jeddah in 2019.