MAGHAREBIA: Salafists protested at Tunis-Carthage Airport as security expelled two fundamentalist theologians.
Tunisian authorities on Tuesday (May 15th) deported two radical Moroccan preachers with alleged ties to al-Qaeda.
Salafist preachers Hassan Kettani and Omar Hadouchi were accused of trying to enter the country illegally. Both were banned from Tunisia after receiving 20-year prison sentences for indoctrinating the Islamists who committed the deadly 2003 Casablanca attacks, according to the Tunisian interior ministry.
They travelled to Tunisia for a 15-day visit to present a series of lectures on behalf of the salafist Dar as-Salam Association for Charity and Sharia Sciences in Bizerte, but security intercepted them at the Tunis–Carthage Airport.
Though they both received royal pardons from Morocco in February, the Tunisian interior ministry cited "their involvement in terrorist acts and belonging to al-Qaeda" as reasons why they were denied entry to the country.
Neither the two jihadist theologians nor the organisation from which they received the invitation admitted to doing anything wrong. » | Houda Trabelsi for Magharebia in Tunis | Friday, May 18, 2012
