Salah ben Youssef

Salah Ben Youssef صالح بن يوسف
Salah ben Youssef
TunisianMinister of Justice
In office 1950–1952
Monarch	Lamine Bey
Prime Minister	Mohamed Chenik
Preceded by	Mohamed Abdelaziz Djaït
Secretary General ofNeo Destour
In office October 17, 1948 – October 8, 1955
Preceded by	Habib Bourguiba
Succeeded by	Bahi Ladgham
Personal details
Born	(1907-10-11)October 11, 1907 Maghraoua,Djerba,French Tunisia
Died	August 12, 1961(1961-08-12)(aged 53) Frankfurt,West Germany
Manner of death	Assassination
Resting place	Djellaz Cemetery,Tunis
Political party	Neo Destour
Profession	Lawyer

Salah Ben Youssef(Arabic:صالح بن يوسف,romanized:Ṣalāḥ ibn Yūsuf;October 11, 1907 – August 12, 1961) was aTunisianpolitician and one of the key leaders of theTunisian national movement.

Early life and advocacy of independence

Born in Maghraoua, a small village nearMidounon 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 beingHabib Bourguiba's protégé.

He began his political career as the Secretary General of theNeo-DestourPolitical 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 ofMohamed 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. He then traveled across the world for more than three years, during which he was received byGamal Abdel Nasser,President of Egypt,Jawaharlal Nehru,Prime Minister of India, andZhou Enlai,Premier of the People's Republic of China. Meanwhile, Bourguiba signed agreements with France on 3 June 1955 establishing internal autonomy for Tunisia.

Confrontation with Bourguiba

Ben Youssef deplored the autonomy agreements, which took place without him, as "a step backwards and a setback". In his 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 friend of Bourgiba, when he returned to the country on June 1, 1955, he became Bourghiba's arch-enemy.According to Ben Youssef, his adversary was capable of practicing a "policy of denial and betrayal" of the Tunisian People and concerning theAlgerian War.Having returned to Tunisia fromCairoon September 13, he began to organize unrest throughout the country.

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

Those 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.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 roles and excluded from the party following the congress convened from November 15 to 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.He remained committed to his activism up until January 1958.

Exile and assassination

On two occasions, in January 1957 and in November 1958, Ben Youssef was sentenced to death. However, he was able to escape on January 28,allowing him to avoid the realization of those sentences.Pursued, he fled toTripoli,Libyaand then toCairo,Egyptwhere he was able to take advantage of a temporary estrangement between Bourghiba and Nasser. However, soon his presence became bothersome. He went toZurich,Switzerlandwhere 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 byeczemaon hislegs,took up residence in a hotel inWiesbaden,West Germanyon June 2, 1961, in order to use the localthermal baths.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 wifeWassila Ben Ammar,Mohamed Masmoudi,Hassen Belkhodja,Taïeb MhiriandBéchir Zarg Layoun.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. After the work ofThe Truth and Dignity Commission,the Criminal Chamber specialized in transitional justice cases in the First Instance Court of Tunis began its work on May 16, 2019, with the following as accused: The Presidency of the Republic,the Presidential Guard,theMinistry of the Interior,theMinistry of Foreign Affairs,theEmbassy of Tunisia in Germany,Germany,Habib Bourguiba,Bashir Zarg Layoun, Hsan Ben Abdelaziz Ouerdeni, Abdallah Ben Mabrouk Ouardeni, Mohamed Ben Khalifa Mehrez and Hmida Ben Tarbout. Noted that the case is classified because of the death of Habib Bourguiba, Bashir Zarg El Ayoun and Hsan Ouerdeni. For Abdallah Ouardeni and Khalifa Mehrez; They remain not found. Hmida Ben Tarbout was auditioned by the commission. The plan consisted of making Ben Youssef believe that these were officers of theTunisian Armed Forceswho wanted to see him in order to inform him of and request his presence in a Tunisian coup d'état.

Tomb of Salah Ben Youssef

Less than twenty days after the conclusion of theBizerte crisisand basking in patriotic fervour of the Tunisian people, Bourghiba judged that the moment had come to remove his principal political rival.Once Ben Youssef arrived in Frankfurt, he left his wife Soufia in a café on theKaiserstrasseand 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.It was only three hours later that Soufia discovered her husband bathing comatose in his blood. He was taken to theUniversity Hospital Frankfurtwhere he died around 22:45 without ever regaining consciousness

Afterwards

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 atJellaz Cemetery.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 thePresident of TunisiaZine el-Abidine Ben Ali.She died in 2016. His granddaughter,Leila Ben Youssef,is an athlete who performspole vaulting.

In April 2012,Al Jazeera Documentary Channelput out a film produced by the TunisianJamel Dallaliabout Ben Youssef's life, titledSalah Ben Youssef, un crime d'État(which translates to "Salah Ben Youssef, a Crime of the State" ).

Bibliography

• Omar Khlifi,L'assassinat de Salah Ben Youssef,éd. MC-Editions, Carthage, 2005.ISBN9973807480.