TUNIS: Authorities in Tunisia, engaged in a battle against home-grown jihadists, have cashiered 110 members of the security forces for suspected links to extremist groups, the interior ministry's spokesman said Wednesday.
Those cashiered belong to "different corps -- police, national guard, the army, customs," said Walid Louguini, without saying when the action took place.
Their sacking "is linked... to very serious suspicions of membership in terrorist organisations or sympathy towards them," Louguini said, adding that they were the result of investigations dating to the beginning of the year.
Senior ministry official Taoufik Bouaoun told private Radio Med on Monday that "five or six" members of the security forces had been arrested for "direct links" with smuggling or terrorism.
Bouaoun said that since he joined the ministry after last November's elections, it had been discovered that certain appointments had not been subjected to proper security clearances.
Since dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was ousted at the beginning of 2011, Tunisia has been plagued by an Islamist insurgency.
Two senior politicians and dozens of members of the security forces have been killed over the past four years, and 59 foreign tourists were shot dead in two attacks this year.
AFP
