Tunisian Combatant Group
| Tunisian Combatant Group | |
|---|---|
| Participant in the Global War on Terrorism | |
| Active | 2000s |
| Ideology | Salafi jihadism |
| Area of operations |
Tunisia Western Europe |
| Split from | Ennahda Movement |
| Became | Ansar al-Sharia (Tunisia) |
| Allies | |
| Opponents | |
The Tunisian Combatant Group (Arabic: الجماعة التونسية المقاتلة; Jama’a Combattante Tunisienne, French: Groupe Combattant Tunisien) or TCG was a loose network of terrorists founded in 2000 that aspired to install an Islamist government in Tunisia. According to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), TCG is believed to have had terrorist cells in France, Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and in the United Kingdom. By the 2010s, it was not clear whether the group still existed.
The TCG was founded in 2000 by Tarek Ben Habib Maaroufi and Seifallah Ben Hassine, in close cooperation with al-Qaeda. The group aimed to establish an Islamic state in Tunisia ruled according to Sharia. The strategy of the TCG was set during a meeting in Khost, Afghanistan, where it declared its support for Osama bin Laden. Most of its members were trained in al-Qaeda-linked camps in Afghanistan, and it later organised training for new recruits in the camps. It has been described as an offshoot of the formerly banned Ennahda Movement.
A number of the detainees held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, in Cuba, remain in detention, in part, because American intelligence analysts allege they were members of TCG.
Maaroufi was arrested by Belgian authorities in December 2001, and in 2004 sentenced to five years imprisonment. Since 2004 the TCG did not have capabilities to operate in Tunisia, and was since then based among the Tunisian diaspora in Western Europe.
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Wikipedia