Tunisian Party Calls For Designating Muslim Brotherhood as Terrorist Organization

A riot police officer fires teargas during clashes with supporters of Islamist group Ansar al-Sharia at Hai al Tadamon in Tunis May 19, 2013. REUTERS/Anis Mili
A riot police officer fires teargas during clashes with supporters of Islamist group Ansar al-Sharia at Hai al Tadamon in Tunis May 19, 2013. REUTERS/Anis Mili
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Tunisian Party Calls For Designating Muslim Brotherhood as Terrorist Organization

A riot police officer fires teargas during clashes with supporters of Islamist group Ansar al-Sharia at Hai al Tadamon in Tunis May 19, 2013. REUTERS/Anis Mili
A riot police officer fires teargas during clashes with supporters of Islamist group Ansar al-Sharia at Hai al Tadamon in Tunis May 19, 2013. REUTERS/Anis Mili

Tunisia's Free Constitutional Party bloc announced Monday its decision to submit a new draft resolution to classify the Muslim Brotherhood as a “terrorist organization” and a movement deemed “hostile to the civil state".

The Muslim Brotherhood should be designated as a terrorist organization in Tunisia, a petition submitted to the Tunisian Parliament by head of the Tunisian opposition figure and President of the Free Destourian Party (PDL) Abir Moussi said on Monday.

In a press conference, Moussi explained that the new draft resolution calls on the government to formally “classify the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization that is hostile to the civil state” and push the state to “consider any Tunisian person or entity that has connections to this organization as being guilty of a terrorist crime according to the law on terrorism.”

“Today we want a clear political position. Political parties and politicians who want to openly dissociate themselves from the Muslim Brotherhood organization must prove so and vote in favor of this draft motion,” Moussi said.

“Some political entities and civil society groups in Tunisia have leaders and members who belong to the Muslim Brotherhood and receive funding from the organization,” the PDL leader said, adding that such a situation is “inconceivable” as it is a “threat to national sovereignty.”

Ennahda and its leaders have in the past denied affiliation to the Muslim Brotherhood organization and reiterated their denunciation of terrorism.

But Ennahda’s critics and rivals, including the PDL, have highlighted the ideological and historical links of Ennahda with the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist affiliations and criticized its links to Brotherhood-aligned governments in Ankara, Doha and Tripoli as being detrimental to the national interest.

On June 3., Tunisia's Free Constitutional Party submitted a bill to the parliament to express rejection to any foreign military intervention in Libya, especially the Turkish intervention. Yet, it didn’t garner sufficient votes to be passed.



Trump Administration Ends Some USAID Contracts Providing Lifesaving Aid across the Middle East

A USAID flag flutters outside, as the USAID building sits closed to employees after a memo was issued advising agency personnel to work remotely, in Washington, DC, US, February 3, 2025. (Reuters)
A USAID flag flutters outside, as the USAID building sits closed to employees after a memo was issued advising agency personnel to work remotely, in Washington, DC, US, February 3, 2025. (Reuters)
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Trump Administration Ends Some USAID Contracts Providing Lifesaving Aid across the Middle East

A USAID flag flutters outside, as the USAID building sits closed to employees after a memo was issued advising agency personnel to work remotely, in Washington, DC, US, February 3, 2025. (Reuters)
A USAID flag flutters outside, as the USAID building sits closed to employees after a memo was issued advising agency personnel to work remotely, in Washington, DC, US, February 3, 2025. (Reuters)

The Trump administration has notified the World Food Program and other partners that it has terminated some of the last remaining lifesaving humanitarian programs across the Middle East, a US official and a UN official told The Associated Press on Monday.

The projects were being canceled “for the convenience of the US Government” at the direction of Jeremy Lewin, a top lieutenant at Trump adviser Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency whom the Trump administration appointed to oversee and finish dismantling the US Agency for International Development, according to letters sent to USAID partners and viewed by the AP.

About 60 letters canceling contracts were sent over the past week, including for major projects with the World Food Program, the world’s largest provider of food aid, a USAID official said. An official with the United Nations in the Middle East said the World Food Program received termination letters for US-funded programs in Lebanon, Jordan and Syria.

Both officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly.

Some of the last remaining US funding for key programs in Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan and the southern African nation of Zimbabwe also was affected, including for those providing food, water, medical care and shelter for people displaced by war, the USAID official said.

The UN official said the groups that would be hit hardest include Syrian refugees in Jordan and Lebanon. Also affected are programs supporting vulnerable Lebanese people and providing irrigation systems inside Syria, a country emerging from a brutal civil war and struggling with poverty and hunger.

In Yemen, another war-divided country that is facing one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters, the terminated aid apparently includes food that has already arrived in distribution centers, the UN official said.

Aid officials were just learning of many of the cuts Monday and said they were struggling to understand their scope.

Another of the notices, sent Friday, abruptly pulled US funding for a program with strong support in Congress that had sent young Afghan women overseas for schooling amid Taliban prohibitions on women’s education, said an administrator for that project, which is run by Texas A&M University.

The young women would now face return to Afghanistan, where their lives would be in danger, according to that administrator, who was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The Trump administration had pledged to spare those most urgent, lifesaving programs in its cutting of aid and development programs through the State Department and USAID.

The Republican administration already has canceled thousands of USAID contracts as it dismantles USAID, which it accuses of wastefulness and of advancing liberal causes.

The newly terminated contracts were among about 900 surviving programs that Secretary of State Marco Rubio had notified Congress he intended to preserve, the USAID official said.

There was no immediate comment from the State Department.