Seifallah Ben Hassine

Seifallah Ben Omar Ben Hassine, known as Abu Ayyad al-Tunisi, was a Tunisian Islamic militant and the founder and leader of Ansar al-Sharia (Tunisia).

He was born 8 November 1965 in Menzel Bourguiba in northern Tunisia. He became involved in 1980 with the 'Movement of Islamic Tendency' which later became the Ennahda Movement. He was a senior leader in the Tunisian Islamic Front, the armed wing of the party, by 1986.

He was in Saudi Arabia with Abd al-Aziz ibn Baz and may have had interaction with the Armed Islamic Group of Algeria and the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group.

He fled Tunisia following a crackdown by the regime of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali against the student movements in 1987. He was sentenced in absentia by the Tunis military court to two years in prison for his participation in the events.

He first moved to Morocco where he studied in the Faculty of Legal Sciences at the Mohammed I University. It was at this time he married. He later went to the United Kingdom in the 1990s and studied under the al-Qaeda cleric Abu Qatada.

He then fought alongside Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and in 2000 was the co-founder of a group of Tunisian militants known as the Tunisian Combat Group. He ran a guesthouse for Tunisians in Jalalabad and the men who stayed there were connected to al-Qaeda. He provided the two Tunisian men who killed Ahmad Shah Massoud, leader of the Northern Alliance. Ahmad Shah Massoud was killed by the two men, suicide bombers posing as journalists, two days before the September 11 attacks.

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