Zine el Abidine Ben Ali

President Zine el Abidine Ben Ali (born September 1936) has used the AQIM threat to rationalise his extremely hard line on the Islamist opposition a policy that has also stifled non-Islamist opposition and media activity...

Political life will remain dominated by President Zine el Abidine Ben Ali and the top ranks of his Rassemblement Constitutionnel Démocratique which is set to win the next multiparty elections due in 2009...

Li met Khumbo Kchali vice-president of Malawi's ruling Democratic Progressive Party Zambia's Acting President Rupiah Banda and Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali...

During the same period GSPC cells reportedly supported an attack on police units in Tunisia where President Zine el Abidine Ben Ali has controlled Islamists with a rod of iron since his 1989 crackdown on Rachid Ghannouchi's Ennahda (Renaissance) movement...

In Tunisia Zine el Abidine Ben Ali enters his eighth decade promising political reform...

TUNISIA: President Zine el Abidine Ben Ali has again made commitments to open up the political system but this moves at glacial speed while his Rassemblement Constitutionnel Démocratique dominates all facets of public life and (via the membership of a majority of owners and senior managers) the economy...

Both Algeria's President Abdelaziz Bouteflika and Tunisia's President Zine el Abidine Ben Ali won big election victories in 2004...

Economic growth and social advances (including female MPs) are the reward most Tunisians seem to accept for keeping Zine el Abidine Ben Ali's autocratic government (AC Vol 45 No 4)...

President Zine el Abidine Ben Ali's restrained applause after the national soccer team's victory in the African Cup of Nations on 14 February was like many things in Tunisia heavily controlled...