President Kaïs Saïed on Friday (May 12th) denied any allegation of state anti-Semitism in Tunisia, after a deadly shooting by a gendarme outside a synagogue on the island of Djerba.
The attack took place Tuesday night as hundreds of worshippers completed the annual Jewish pilgrimage to the Ghriba synagogue, Africa's oldest. Three gendarmes and two worshippers - one Israeli-Tunisian and one Franco-Tunisian - were killed by the assailant's gunfire before he was shot dead by police. Tunisian authorities denounced a "criminal" attack but refrained from calling it "terrorist" or giving it an anti-Semitic dimension.
But in France, the national anti-terrorist prosecutor's office (Pnat) competent because of the French nationality of one of the victims, opened Wednesday "an investigation of the charge of murder in connection with a terrorist enterprise". "Always, relentlessly, we will fight against anti-Semitic hatred," French President Emmanuel Macron said in condemning the attack, in a message posted on Twitter. "We stand alongside Tunisia to continue the fight against anti-Semitism and all forms of fanaticism," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Anne-Claire Legendre said.
Referring to the attack during a meeting with Prime Minister Najla Bouden and several ministers, Kaïs Saïed reiterated that Tunisia "will remain safe despite desperate attempts to undermine its stability," according to a statement from the presidency. He thanked the states that "expressed their solidarity" with his country after the attack while rejecting "any foreign interference because the sovereignty of Tunisia and its people are red lines that cannot be crossed."
He also "expressed his astonishment at the reactions involving accusations of anti-Semitism against Tunisia," without specifying what he was referring to. In support of his claims, he listed laws guaranteeing freedom of worship and the rights of minorities, including Jews, in Tunisia. The Ghriba pilgrimage is at the heart of the traditions of Tunisians of the Jewish faith, which are now only 1,500, against 100,000 before independence in 1956. In 2002, the synagogue was targeted by a suicide truck bomb attack that killed 21 people. It had been claimed by Al-Qaida.