Saifallah Ben Hassin (died 14 June 2015), also known as Abu Ayadh al-Tunisi, was the leader of Ansar al-Sharia in Tunisia and its Ajnad al-Khilafah subgroup. He was killed in a US Air Force airstrike in Libya in 2015.
Biography[]
Saifallah Ben Hassin was born in Tunisia, but he lived in the United Kingdom during the 1990s, and he was mentored by Abu Qatada. Ben Hassin was imprisoned by the government of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali for many years due to his beliefs in Islamism. Following the 2011 Tunisian Revolution, a free Hassin formed the Ansar al-Sharia in Tunisia jihadist group in late April 2011, seeking to establish sharia law in Tunisia. Ben Hassin held a conference in Kariouan, where he demanded the Islamization of media, education, tourism, and commerce, the implementation of sharia, and the establishment of an Islamic trade union against the secular Tunisian General Labor Union. He trained Seifiddine Rezgui Yacoubi, the perpetrator of the 2015 Sousse attacks, but he was killed in a US Air Force airstrike on 14 June 2015 in Ajdabiya in eastern Libya in an airstrike targeting Mokhtar Belmokhtar, not living to see the attacks twelve days after the attack.