Salah ben Youssef

Salah Ben Youssef
صالح بن يوسف

Salah ben Youssef
Tunisian Minister of Justice
In office
1950–1952
Monarch Lamine Bey
Prime Minister Mohamed Chenik
Preceded by Mohamed Abdelaziz Djaït
Secretary General of Neo Destour
In office
17 October 1948 – 8 October 1955
Preceded by Habib Bourguiba
Succeeded by Bahi Ladgham
Personal details
Born (1907-10-11)October 11, 1907
Maghraoua, Djerba, Tunisa
Died August 12, 1961(1961-08-12) (aged 53)
Frankfurt, West Germany
Nationality Tunisian
Political party Neo Destour
Profession Lawyer

Salah Ben Youssef (صالح بن يوسف), born on October 11, 1907 in Maghraoua, (Djerba) and was assassinated on 12 August 1961 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, he is a Tunisian Politician and one of the key leaders of the Tunisian national movement.

Early life

Born in Maghraoua, a small village near Midoun[1] on Djerba, to a family of wealthy and influential merchants. He trained to be a lawyer, but became involved in politics where he was prized for his personal qualities. This would later lead to his ascension to being Habib Bourguiba's protégé.

He began his political career as the Secretary General of the Neo-Destour Political Party, a post where he played a role of key organizer during Bourguiba's exile. In August 1950, he was appointed as the Tunisian Minister of Justice in the government of Mohamed Chenik. Charged with bringing the Tunisian request for statehood to the United Nations, which was gathered in Paris in March 1952, he barely escaped arrest and deportation. While travelling across the world for more than three years—during which he was received by Gamal Abdel Nasser, President of Egypt, Jawaharlal Nehru, Prime Minister of India, and even Zhou Enlai, Premier of the People's Republic of China,—the agreements with France concerning internal autonomy for Tunisia were signed.

Confrontation

This fait accompli took place without him and he considered it "a step backwards and a setback". In Ben Youssef's view, the wholesale evacuation of French Troops from the entirety of Tunisian territory was an indisputable prerequisite for genuine national independence.

Whereas Ben Youssef was previously a loyal servant and friend of Bourghiba, when he returned to the country on June 1, 1955, he became Bourghiba's arch-enemy.[2] According to Ben Youssef, his adversary was capable of practicing a "policy of denial and betrayal" of the Tunisian People and concerning the Algerian War. Having returned to Tunisia from Cairo on September 13, he began to organize unrest throughout the country.

Arrival of Salah Ben Youssef to Tunis September 13, 1955.

Though aligned with Bourguiba, the "Bourguibists", and those aligned with Ben Youssef, the Youssefists, began to have numerous meetings to denounce and strike down the position of the opposing party...[3] Convened on October 8, under Bourguiba's leadership, the Neo-Destour caucus decided to open session and thereupon demand that Ben Youssef be expelled from the party. Stripped of his functions and excluded from the party following the congress convened from November 15 to November 19, Ben Youssef, continued to campaign in the south of Tunisia where he organized a number of gatherings up to the end of November which resulted in clashes with Bourguiba supporters.[3] He remained, however, committed to his activism up until January 1958.

Exile and Assassination

On two occasion, in January 1957 and in November 1958, Ben Youssef was sentenced to the death penalty. However, he was able to escape on January 28, allowing him to avoid the realization of those sentences.[3] Pursued, he fled to Tripoli, Libya and then to Cairo, Egypt where he was able to take advantage of a temporary estrangement between Bourghiba and Nasser. However, soon his presence became bothersome. He went to Zurich, Switzerland where he received Bourghiba one last time on March 3, 1961. Realizing that the relationship between Bourghiba and himself would forever be intractable, Ben Youssef, who was afflicted by eczema on his legs, took up residence in a hotel in Wiesbaden, West Germany on June 2, 1961 in order to use the local thermal bathes.[4] On August 12, he was assassinated in a Frankfurt hotel by two accomplices.

Some published sources advance the argument that the leaders of the conspiracy to eliminate Ben Youssef were Bourguiba himself, his wife Wassila Ben Ammar, Mohamed Masmoudi, Hassen Belkhodja, Taïeb Mhiri and Béchir Zarg Layoun.[4] The Minister of the Interior Mehiri would have requested the use of two persons that Zarg Layoun had just recruited to see the plan through. The plan consisted of making Ben Youssef believe that these were officers of the Tunisian Armed Forces who wanted to see him in order to inform him of and request his presence in a Tunisian Coup d'État[4]

Tomb of Salah Ben Youssef

Less than twenty days after the conclusion of the Bizerte crisis and basking in patriotic ferver of the Tunisian people, Bourghiba judged that the moment had come to remove his principal political rival.[4] Once Ben Youssef arrived in Frankfurt, he left his wife Soufia in a café on the Kaiserstrasse and went towards the Hotel Royal, situated on the same street. It was there that the two henchmen met him and brought him with them to their room to go over the plan for the coup d'état. One of them shot him at close range around 16:30.[4] It was only three hours later that Soufia discovered her husband bathing comatose in his blood. He was taken to the University Hospital Frankfurt where he died around 22:45 without ever regaining consciousness[4]

He was sent back to Cairo and entombed there, but his remains were later repatriated to Tunisia and re-interred in the Martyr's Square at Jellaz Cemetery.[5] His widow Soufia only returned to Tunisia on December 22, 1987, after more than thirty years of exile in Cairo. She was received on January 2, 1988 by the President of Tunisia Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. In April 2012, Al Jazeera Documentary Channel put out a film produced by the Tunisian Jamel Dallali about Ben Yousef's life, titled Salah Ben Youssef, un crime d'État (which translates to "Salah Ben Youssef, a Crime of the State").

His granddaughter, Leila Ben Youssef, is an athlete who performs pole vaulting.

Bibliography

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Salah Ben Youssef.
  1. ↑ (French) Portrait de Salah Ben Youssef (Saisons tunisiennes)
  2. ↑ (French) Kamel Labidi, « Deuil subversif en Tunisie », Le Monde diplomatique, mai 2000, p. 3
  3. 1 2 3 (French) Les accords : objet de discorde entre les directions daltoïdiennes (50e anniversaire de l'indépendance)
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 « Bonnes feuilles. L'ordre d'assassinat », Réalités, 18 août 2005
  5. ↑ (French) Larbi Chouikha, « Évoquer la mémoire politique dans un contexte autoritaire : « l’extrême gauche » tunisienne entre mémoire du passé et identité présente », L’Année du Maghreb, vol. VI, 2010, pp. 427-440
  6. ↑ Ali Ben Samir, « Le livre évènement de Omar Khlifi. L'assassinat de Salah Ben Youssef », Réalités, 18 août 2005
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