BEN ALI, ZINE AL-ABIDINE

born Sept. 3, 1936, near Sousse, Tun. Tunisian army officer and politician who became president in 1987. Ben Ali was trained in France at the military academy of Saint-Cyr and at the artillery school at Chlons-sur-Marne. He also studied engineering in the United States. He was head of Tunisian military security from 1964 to 1974, a post that took him into top government circles. In 1974 he began a three-year term as military attach to the Tunisian embassy in Morocco. He then returned to Tunisia to become head of national security, and in 1980 he became ambassador to Poland. After his return, he was appointed state secretary for national security in 1984 and a cabinet minister in 1985. He had gained a reputation as a hard-liner in suppressing riots in 1978 and 1984, and in 1986 he became minister of the interior, taking an active role in rooting out the Islamic Tendency Movement, a violent fundamentalist group. In October 1987 President Habib Bourguiba appointed him prime minister. Bourguiba, who had ruled Tunisia since its independence from France in 1956, was ill and considered by many to be unfit to continue in office, and on November 7 Ben Ali deposed him in a peaceful coup. Ben Ali was expected to favour a somewhat less secular government than Bourgiba's, with a more moderate approach toward religious fundamentalists. In elections held on April 2, 1989, he received more than 99 percent of the votes. In 1991, however, he banned the Al-Nahda (Renaissance) party and called for the suppression of Islamic militants, and from this point on he came under increasing criticism for his human rights policies. As head of Rassemblement Constitutionelle Dmocratique, he won reelection in 1994 and 1999, both times with more than 99 percent of the vote.