Active 2000s Area of operations TunisiaWestern Europe | Split from Ennahda Movement | |
Allies Al-QaedaSalafist Group for Preaching and CombatLibyan Islamic Fighting GroupMoroccan Islamic Combatant Group | ||
The Tunisian Combatant Group (Arabic: Jama’a Combattante Tunisienne, French: Groupe Combattant Tunisien) or TCG was a loose network of terrorists founded in 2000 that aspired to install an Islamist government in Tunisia. According to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), TCG is believed to have had terrorist cells in France, Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and in the United Kingdom. By the 2010s, it was not clear whether the group still existed.
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History
The TCG was founded in 2000 by Tarek Ben Habib Maaroufi and Seifallah Ben Hassine, in close cooperation with al-Qaeda. The group aimed to establish an Islamic state in Tunisia ruled according to Sharia. The strategy of the TCG was set during a meeting in Khost, Afghanistan, where it declared its support for Osama bin Laden. Most of its members were trained in al-Qaeda-linked camps in Afghanistan, and it later organised training for new recruits in the camps. It has been described as an offshoot of the formerly banned Ennahda Movement.
A number of the detainees held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, in Cuba, remain in detention, in part, because American intelligence analysts allege they were members of TCG.
Maaroufi was arrested by Belgian authorities in December 2001, and in 2004 sentenced to five years imprisonment. Since 2004 the TCG did not have capabilities to operate in Tunisia, and was since then based among the Tunisian diaspora in Western Europe.
Hassine was arrested by Turkish authorities in 2003, after which he was extradited to Tunisia, where he was sentenced to 43 years imprisonment. Following the Arab Spring and the Tunisian Revolution in 2011, Hassine was released from prison as part of a general amnesty, and went on to found the militant Ansar al-Sharia group.
European branches
The TCG had branches in several European countries. The Italian branch of the organisation was led by Sami ben Khemais Essid, and was dismantled by law enforcement in April 2001. Essid's group was connected to the "Frankfurt group", which was responsible for the Strasbourg Cathedral bombing plot in December 2000. Several members of the TCG in Italy were convicted for terror-related activities in 2003.
The Belgian branch of the TCG was led by Maaroufi, and was responsible for organising the travel to Afghanistan of the two terrorists who assassinated the anti-Taliban Afghan political leader Ahmad Shah Massoud on 9 September 2001. The Belgian branch has since also been dismantled. Kamel ben Moussa, an official of the group was arrested in the United Kingdom on 18 December 2001.
Designation as a terrorist organization
Countries and organizations below have officially listed the Tunisian Combat Group as a terrorist organization.