International arrest warrant issued against Yasser Arafat’s widow

Suha Arafat, the widow of late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, has told AFP she will fight corruption charges against her in Tunisia and said she was a victim of the old regime.  “I will fight it as I fought a lot of things,” Arafat said in an interview in English at her home in Malta where she is currently living.

Justice ministry spokesman Kadhem Zine el Abidine told agencies that a Tunis court had issued the warrant against 48-year-old Suha Arafat, who was stripped of her Tunisian citizenship in 2007.

Malese police sources said they have not yet received the IAW while the ambassador for the Palestinian Authority in Malta, Jubran Tawil - who is brother to Suha Arafat - is away from the island.

“I was so much astonished, badly astonished actually because I was a victim of the Tunisian dictatorship,” Arafat said, adding that she had “not been informed officially” of any warrant and had read about it in the press.

According to Tunisian papers, Suha Arafat is wanted over alleged corruption dating back to 2006, when she founded the Carthage International School in Tunis with the country’s much-vilified former first lady Leila Trabelsi.

The two women then fell out, purportedly over Suha Arafat’s criticism of an alleged move by Trabelsi to close down another private school that would have been direct competition for their joint venture.

Speaking to AFP by phone earlier Monday, she said: “I reject all the accusations listed in the media; I am ready to deal with this issue, to submit documents, and I have entrusted a Tunisian lawyer to present these documents.

 “I have had no connection since 2007 with the issue of the International School,” said the widow of the former Palestinian leader, who died in 2004.

According to a US diplomatic cable revealed by the Wikileaks, Arafat met the then US ambassador after the dispute and lashed out at the ruling family. She said that now ousted dictator Zine el Abidine Ben Ali would spend all day in his residence running after his young son and “simply does what his wife asks him to do”.

Suha Arafat was subsequently declared persona non grata, stripped of her Tunisian nationality and expelled. She settled in Malta, where her brother served as Palestinian ambassador.