Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali (born September 9, 1936) was the second president of Tunisia from 1987 to 2011.
On January 14, 2011, he was forced to leave Tunisia and go to Saudi Arabia with his wife Leïla Ben Ali and their three children after a month of protests against his rule. The Arab Spring started in Tunisia.
Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali was born in Hammam-Sousse on September 9, 1936.
He was assigned to manage (direct and take care) the Defense Military Security in 1964, and worked there until 1974. He was then promoted (his grade was changed to a superior one) to director-general of National Security at the Ministry of Interior in 1977. After that, he was assigned to take care of relations between Tunisia and the Kingdom of Morocco.
After being the ambassador of Tunisia in Poland, he returned to National Security.
Right before becoming the President of Tunisian Republic, Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali has been promoted to Prime Minister and the constitutional successor on October 1, 1987.
Five weeks after his promotion he, officially, became the Second President of Tunisia.
The way that Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali governs had cause some problems with groups including the Al-Jazeera channel. Al-Jazeera does not believe it is correct for Ben Ali to say that Muslim women wearing headscarves (religious clothes) in public places must take then off and say that they will not wear them in public again.
This page was last changed on 23 March 2018, at 01:39.