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By Houda Mzioudet.
Tunis, 24 July 2015:
Tunisia is to appoint a new consul general to Tripoli. Sami Sik Salem, a former director . . .[restrict]general of presidential security during the Tunisian revolution in January 2014, has been appointed by Taieb Baccouche, Tunisian minister of foreign affairs, according to Tunisian Radio Mosaique.
Salem will be based in Tunis until such time the consulate-general in Tripoli reopens.
Tunisia closed it on 19 June following the freeing of ten diplomatic staff kidnapped a week earlier by gunmen from a Tajoura brigade, part of Libya Dawn, which wanted to force the release of one of its commanders, Walid Al-Ghleib. He had been arrested in Tunisia and charged with several terrorist offences. The kidnapping worked. He was freed. Other Tunisians who were also kidnapped elsewhere in the country at the same time as the diplomatic staff were likewise freed.
At the time of the closure, Baccouche had said that a consular office would open at the Ras Jedir border crossing.
The saga of the Tunisian consulate has caused a certain friction in Libyan-Tunisian relations. In March, Tunisia reopened its consulate in Tripoli having earlier closed it and the embassy because of the security conditions in the Libyan capital. The internationally-recognised Libyan government took this as an implicit recognition of the Libya Dawn regime, although Tunisia insisted this was not the case, and there was criticism of the action, in particular by the government’s information chief, Omar Gawairi.
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