Arabs fight Islamists, with few rules

Over the course of his eight years in prison, Lassaad Jaouhari was, he says, subjected to the full spectrum of Tunisia's torture treatments.

First there was the simple "rotisserie," in which he was tied up in a ball and suspended between two tables while being turned like a chicken on a spit. Then there was "the bath," in which he was hung upside down from the ceiling by a motor chain as his head was dipped in a disgusting liquid mixture. In all there were dozens of ingenious techniques and devices used on him in an old French colonial army barracks where he was held between 1991 and 1998.

Accused of membership in the illegal Islamic Movement Ennahdha, Mr. Jaouhari, a Francophone intellectual whose wife is a university professor in Tunis, says the torture – which left him walking with a cane – has not dampened his political aspirations.

Now that he is out of prison, he says that he hopes his group can participate in Tunisia's government. He is, however, still officially forbidden from working or travel- ing outside of his own country. Tunisia's harsh "anti-terror" methods are not unlike those of its larger North African Arab brother, Egypt, whose round-ups of terror suspects and mass trials for them in military tribunals are an infamous annual event in Cairo. The Egyptian courts ban appeals and open the door to "circumstantial evidence," that would be tossed out of most Western courtrooms, say human rights activists.

Authoritarian regimes in both Egypt and Tunisia have for years used their own "wars against terror" to restrict civil liberties and abuse human rights, say Western diplomats and rights activists in the Middle East, Europe, and the US.

A year ago at this time, British and American diplomats peppered their discussions of Arab regimes with a longstanding concern for human rights. But after Sept. 11, they more often praise Egypt and Tunisia for antiterror efforts than criticize them for their less-than-perfect human-rights records.

"I can say – in a general sense – that Egypt's legal procedures have improved due to cooperation with the West since the attacks," says a Western official in Cairo, who monitors human rights. She asserts that her country's criticism of Egyptian roundups of terror suspects has been tempered by the US and allied military efforts to do the same thing in Afghanistan.

But some observers say tough roundups can make the problem worse.

"It is not an easy equation," says Joe Stork, a regional expert for the New York- and London-based Human Rights Watch. "But we certainly think there is a connection between repression and terror, as difficult as it is to specify and prove. There is probably a good reason that Egypt and Saudi Arabia, two highly repressive states, produce so many international terrorists."

Both Egyptian and Tunisian officials give impassioned defenses of their efforts to fight terror with their own rules in their own backyards. Bechir Tekari, Tunisia's minister of justice, says his country has fought what he calls "fanaticism" since the early '90s. "In our country, we have Islam as a state religion, but all forms of violence and fanaticism associated with religion are punished," he explains in his office, which buzzes with German and French investigators. The police are keen to help Tunisia determine who was responsible for a mysterious suicide bombing of a Jewish synagogue on the island of Djerba April 11, which killed 20 people, including 13 German tourists.

Mr. Tekari says his country's own fight against religious extremism is being conducted on four levels.

"In the Constitution, religion is excluded as the base for any political party. Culturally and educationally, we are teaching the young the idea of tolerance of other cultures and religions. On an economic and social level, we have recognized that fanaticism and violence grow from poverty, and we have developed programs to raise the economic standards. Finally, on the judicial front, we introduced terrorism as a crime back in 1993."

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