‘Gaddafi planned Tunis embassy attack’

Tunesia: A Libyan army officer sent by Moamer Kadhafi to Tunis to bomb an Arab embassy has turned himself in to Tunisian authorities, the defence ministry said here on Monday.

The officer, Colonel Abdelrazak Rajhi, had crossed into Tunisia on July 30 to carry out the attack on the embassy of an Arab country using sixteen kilogrammes of explosives, which have been seized, a Tunisian defence ministry official said.

“The planned attack was commissioned by the military top brass, therefore by Moamer Kadhafi. He aimed to derail the Tunisian revolution,” said the Libyan colonel himself who took part in the press conference.

A defence ministry official said Rajhi “handed himself in to the Tunisian army on Friday”. Rajhi had not been placed under arrest because he had tipped off the authorities himself.

“On the contrary, he will be thanked for allowing the attack to be foiled,” the official, Colonel Major Mokhtar Ben Nasser, said.

He did not want to say “for the moment” which embassy was the target. Tunis, Tuesday, AFP