wikileaks [35]: 'Suha Arafat loses Tunisian passport ...blurts out against the Ben Alis'

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 TUNIS 001489
SUBJECT: THE PNG'ING OF SUHA ARAFAT: MANY RUMORS, FEW FACTS
¶1. (C/NF) Summary: The GOT's decision last summer to revoke Suha Arafat's Tunisian citizenship, which had only been granted less than a year earlier, made international headlines. In a mid-October telcon with Ambassador Godec, Mrs. Arafat attributed her ouster to the personal animus of First Lady Leila Ben Ali, following a dispute over the forced closure of the Bouebdelli School, a well-respected private school. Had it remained open, the Bouebdelli School would have represented serious competition to the new Carthage International School, a joint venture between the two FirstLadies. ¶7. (C/NF) Plenty of other theories have stoked the rumor mill in the Suha Arafat affair. One well-connected Palestinian resident in Tunisia told EmbOff that what sealed Mrs. Arafat's fate was that on a recent visit to Tripoli, she had asked Libyan Leader Qaddafi for money. Qaddafi had readily provided a hand-out, but he reportedly subsequently called President Ben Ali to chastise him for failing to provide adequately for the widow of the late Palestinian President. Ben Ali's acute embarrassment, so the story goes, quickly turned to wrath. It was not long before Mrs. Arafat's citizenship was revoked. Another theory holds that Suha Arafat was ousted because she had absconded with a significant amount of the first family's assets. Finally, in the face of persistent rumors that Mrs. Arafat had secretly married Belhassen Trabelsi, brother of the Tunisian First Lady, some commentators chalked up the whole ordeal to the failure of that relationship. ¶8. (C/NF) No doubt as a result of her tribulations, Mrs. Arafat was not shy about sharing with the Ambassador her negative impressions of President Ben Ali, his wife, and her family members, whom, she said, collectively represent a web of corruption. Drawing on her close contact with the first family over the past several years, she made several allegations, among them the following: -- President Ben Ali remains weakened by his battle withcancer (NFI); -- President Ben Ali spends all his time playing with his son and following him around the residence; -- President Ben Ali simply does what his wife asks him to do; -- Leila Ben Ali and her family are stealing everything ofvalue in the country; -- Leila Ben Ali believes that she will succeed her husband as President of Tunisia; -- The members of Ben Ali's extended family can do whatever they want with impunity, including the falsification of documents; -- Leila Ben Ali dropped the American curriculum that had been planned for the Carthage school because she fundamentally wants nothing to do with Americans...... Although difficult to prove, there is a certain ring of truth to the stories of corruption ...