A private jet used by French foreign affairs minister Michèle Alliot-Marie while holidaying in strife-torn Tunisia for the New Year belonged to a business aviation company owned by Belhassen Trabelsi, the reviled brother-in-law of deposed Tunisian President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, Mediapart can reveal.
The same jet, the flight records of which have been accessed by Mediapart, was later suspected of carrying Ben Ali in his night-time escape from Tunisia on January 14th.
Alliot-Marie and her partner Patrick Ollier, a French government minister responsible for relations with parliament, have admitted holidaying in Tunisia's Mediterranean resort of Tabarka while the social uprising that would eventually topple Ben Ali was spreading through the country. However, both she and Ollier have offered erroneous justifications for their presence in Tunisia where, according to UN figures, more than 200 people died during the revolts.
Foreign minister Alliot-Marie has remarkably claimed "there was no repression" in the country during her sojourn. "Since taking up ministerial posts that require me to be able to reach Paris within three hours, I have looked for a country that corresponds to these criteria for my rare holidays," she told French newspaper Le Parisien de dimanche. "Like millions of French people I go to Tunisia."
She had already provoked outrage among the Tunisian opposition during the former regime's brutal repression of mass demonstrations in the country. In a speech before French parliament on January 11th, three days before Ben Ali fled the country, Alliot-Marie offered his government the help of French "know-how" in crowd control.
Following the disclosure of her holidays in Tunisia, French investigative weekly Le Canard Enchaîné, in its edition dated February 3rd, revealed that the ministerial couple, accompanied by Ollier's parents, were flown to Tabarka in a jet described as being the property of Tunisian businessman Mohamed Aziz Miled, a rags-to-riches tycoon who began his career as a travel agent to become head of a major tourism company, Tunisia Travel Service, and an airline, Nouvelair.
In a separate report published this Saturday, French weekly magazine Le Nouvel Observateur revealed that Alliot-Marie and Ollier used the same jet again on December 29th for a day trip to the centre-west of the country. Alliot-Marie subsequently confirmed the report in an interview with France-Info public radio news station.
The flight records for the jet, a Bombardier Challenger 604, registered TS-IBT, consulted by Mediapart, show it completed several round trips between Tunis and Paris over a 48-hour period starting January 12th.
It left Tunis during the evening of the 14th, landing at Cagliari airport in Sardinia when it was immediately met by Italian police (photo below) who suspected Ben Ali was aboard. According to an official Italian police account, the plane was carrying only two flight crew and a hostess. After refueling, it was ordered to immediately leave Italian airspace.
The last known movement of the plane is recorded shortly before 2 a.m. on January 15th, and its final destination remains unknown. Ben Ali's arrival in Saudi Arabia, where he is now living in exile, was confirmed by Riyadh later that day, although the aircraft he used is still not established. If he was not aboard the Bombardier, there can only be doubt that the plane that is in fact registered to a company belonging to Belhassen Trabelsi, elder brother of Ben Ali's wife Leila, and one of the clan's most reviled members, would have left Tunisia empty of any passengers.
In her subsequent confirmation of her holidays and use of the jet, the minister said the couple arrived in Tunisia "after Christmas". Several protestors had already been shot dead by police in revolts that had, by December 25th, erupted into violent clashes in the towns of Sidi Bouzid, Menzel Bouzaiene, al-Ragab, Miknassi, Kairouan, Sfax and Ben Guerdane. The capital Tunis witnessed its first major demonstrations on December 27th.
The foreign minister caused astonishment when she notably claimed that she had left Tunisia before the self-immolation of unemployed 26 year-old graduate Mohammed Bouazizi in the town of Sidi Bouzid, whose desperate act marked the beginnings of the mass protests. Bouazizi in fact set fire to himself on December 17th.
A friend and 'his' jet
Called to account following the Canard Enchaîné report last week, Alliot-Marie told French parliament the plane belonged to Miled, who she described as "a friend" and "a businessman respected in Tunisia", who was "despoiled" by Ben Ali's close entourage. In fact, Miled owned the majority shares in Nouvelair, whose managing director was Belhassen Trabelsi.
Billionaire Trabelsi fled Tunisia last month to Montreal, Canada. The interim government in Tunisia has now issued an international arrest warrant for his arrest on charges of illegally obtaining property, the illegal possession and transfer of foreign currency and unauthorized trading in arms and munitions.
Miled founded Nouvelair in 1990, and in 2008 it merged with Trabelsi's smaller Karthago Airlines. Despite owning a minority stake, Trabelsi became head of the new company. It was typical of the tentacular manouevring employed by the Trabelsi family, who used presidential influence to enrich themselves through ownership and managerial positions in key areas of the Tunisian economy.
In a US diplomatic cable recently revealed by Wikileaks, American ambassador to Tunisia, Robert F Godec, described Belhassen as "the most notorious" Trabelsi family member "rumored to have been involved in a wide-range of corrupt schemes from the recent Banque de Tunisie board shakeup to property expropriation and extortion of bribes."
"Trabelsi's holdings are extensive," the cable continues, "and include an airline, several hotels, one of Tunisia's two private radio stations, car assembly plants, Ford distribution, a real estate development company, and the list goes on." (To see the cable in full and its astonishing account of the corruption employed by the Trabelsi family, click here, and for another describing the ostentatious behaviour of the Trabelsis click here.)
According to records from the European aviation authority EuroControl, the Bombardier used by Alliot-Marie is registered as belonging to Trabelsi's Karthago Airlines. Mediapart has consulted Tunisian finance ministry documents that show Trabelsi invested 4.75 million Tunisian dinars (2.46 million euros) for the creation, on February 28th, 2008, of a subsidiary called Karthago Private Jet.
The Bombardier Challenger jet in question was, according to other documents obtained by Mediapart, bought on May 24th, 2010. It was previously registered with owners in the Dutch Caribbean island of Aruba.
Aviation officials in Tunisia and Europe have told Mediapart that it is common practice in business aviation circles to include the initials of a jet's owner, or principal user, at the end of its international registration. According to a Nouvelair employee contacted by Mediapart and who asked not to be named, Belhassen Trabelsi was the regular user of the Bombardier, whose registration is, TS-IBT. (It can be seen pictured by plane-spotters in Geneva and Munich by clicking here)
Alliot-Marie told French MPs on February 3rd: "Arriving after Christmas in Tunis, a friend travelling to Tabarka, the final point of [our] destination, with his plane, did indeed propose to me to travel with him because he had [free] seats, instead of going two hours by car. He at no moment put his plane at my disposition, I accompanied him for twenty minutes." She said the flight saved her and her companions "a quite difficult" two-hour road journey.
The Nouvel Observateur reported that Alliot-Marie again used the jet on December 29th, 2010, for a daytrip to Tozeur in the centre-west of Tunisia. The outing, according to an article on the weekly's website published Saturday, included lunch at Tozeur and the visit of an oasis. The excursion involved overflying two towns gripped by the popular uprising and which the ministers would have had to cross if travelling by car.
The background to Alliot-Marie's relationship with Miled, who is also the owner of the hotel in Tabarki where the ministerial couple holidayed, is still unclear. His press office, reacting to the controversy, said he "wishes to make clear that the Alliot-Marie family are friends since a long time."
Alliot-Marie's description of Miled as a "victim" of the Ben Ali clan by whom, she says, he was "despoiled", may refer to the arrangement he has since said he was forced to accept with the all-powerful Trabelsi.
However, Miled was hardly a public opponent of the regime; he was a a member of the central committee of Ben Ali's ruling RCD party, and a signatory to a recent public call for the re-election of Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali in elections that were due in 2014. In 2009, he was decorated by Ben Ali with the ‘Grand Cordon of the Order of November 7th', the highest rank in pompous yearly civil decorations celebrating the strongman's arrival as president in November 1987. His ties with the former regime led to the freeze of his assets in Switzerland last month, although the measure has now been lifted.
'Grave offence' against moral standards
The recent flight records for the Bombardier jet he shared use of with Trabelsi - and the French foreign minister - show it completed a journey from Tunis to the south-west France Atlantic resort of Biarritz on Friday October 15th, 2010. On the following Sunday, October 17th, it left Biarritz for Paris.
Biarritz and its surrounding region are both a longstanding political base for Alliot-Marie and her family. Her father, Bernard Marie, was a Member of Parliament for the local Pyrénées-Atlantiques region from 1967 to 1981, and he was mayor of Biarritz from 1983 to 1991. Michèle Alliot-Marie rose from being a local councilor in the region, in 1983, to become mayor of Saint-Jean-de-Luz, close to Biarritz. Since 1986, she has served seven terms as an MP for the Pyrénées-Atlantiques region.
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Contacted by Mediapart, a spokesperson for the French foreign ministry said neither Alliot-Marie nor her partner Patrick Ollier had travelled in the jet in October. "On the other hand, it is possible that Monsieur Miled came to France, that we don't know," the spokesperson commented. "But he is a friend of the minister, as she has always said, not Belhassen Trabelsi."
Following the revelation of her controversial holidays and the use of the jet, Alliot-Marie has been summoned by French opposition parties to resign, and has been targeted by fierce criticism from within her own political camp. She has dismissed both, and has received the support of Prime Minister François Fillon who, talking in the third person, told reporters on Thursday: "I want to tell you that the Minister of Foreign Affairs has all the confidence of the Prime Minister and of the President of the republic."
In a letter sent to Fillon on Friday and made public, a senator from the ruling UMP party, Alain Fouché, complained that the conduct of Alliot-Marie and Ollier had "gravely offended" the political morals of the French republic.
"Worse still," Fouché wrote, "the reputation of independence of our foreign policy cannot but suffer from breaches of the sort which, furthermore, were committed in a country where unfolded the recent events we know about, and during which one of the ministers concerned had made declarations that are at the very least inopportune." The senator demanded of Fillon to keep him informed of how he intended to follow up the matter.
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