| 01 December 2011 | 2 Comments
 
 

Yves Aubin de La Messuzière

The former French Ambassador to Tunisia, Yves Aubin De La Messuzière, has revealed that he warned his government of the possibility of the collapse of Ben Ali’s regime before the “reports of U.S. Ambassador Godec released by Wikileaks.”

The former french diplomat, who served as Ambassador between 2002 and 2005, stated that “Now that I am free from diplomatic constraints which demand secrecy, and after becoming a researcher and a writer, I asked for permission from the French Foreign Ministry to reveal some of the reports about Tunisia in detail, including my reports about Tunisia’s social problems under President Zine El-Abedine Ben Ali, the decline of civil liberties and the repression of non-governmental organisations for the past ten years.”

He emphasized that he and other diplomats in Tunis were warning their superiors about the decay of the Ben Ali regime and the discontent among Tunisian youth long before the revolution started, “I personally and my ambassadorial colleagues of the United States and European capitals shared information and sent reports to our governments about corruption and bribery, nepotism and illicit enrichment of Ben Ali’s close associates at a time while the exasperation and discontent of the Tunisian youth was spreading.”
The former diplomat also announced that two documents will soon be released which contain reports he sent to Paris during 2004.
De La Messuzière claims that according to these documents, he predicted that the situation of the Tunisian youth would soon deteriorate especially among college graduates. In addition, the former diplomat admitted “No one expected Ben Ali’s regime to end the way it did.”
The former French diplomat also predicted that Ennahda would emerge victorious from free and fair elections if they were ever held in Tunisia. “Since the beginning of the last decade, I predicted the return of Islamists and Ennahda, I knew groups of religious people were organizing outside of mosques and they were talking about the oppression they were exposed to at the time,” said de La Messuzière.
De La Messuzière made his remarks at an international conference yesterday, November 30, at the International Studies Association in Paris.
Source: Assabah