GAMMARTH: Tunisian Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali kicked off viewing yesterday for an auction of thousands of luxury items once owned by ousted dictator Zine El Abidine Ali and his family.
Jebali inspected 40 luxury cars, thousands of clothing, jewelry items and art works on the eve of the public auction which is being held in the Tunis suburb of Gammarth in a bid to raise millions of euros for government coffers.
Highlight of the month-long sale is expected to be the cars, which include a Lamborghini Gallardo LP 460, a Bentley Continental sports car, an armored Cadillac and a Maybach 62. Suits belonging to the toppled despot are expected to go for 3,000 euros each, while coats belonging to his wife Leila Trabelsi, who was notorious for her expensive tastes, could fetch as much as 4,000 euros.
Her handbags are expected fetch 3,000 euros, while the couple’s footwear is expected to command prices ranging from 100 to 300 euros.
Acting finance minister Slim Besbes told reporters earlier this week that items valued at less than 10,000 dinars (5,000 euros) would be sold at fixed price, but that anything priced above that would be put to auction.
The government hopes to raise at least 10 million euros from the sale.
Besbes said the items belonged to Ben Ali and 114 of his relatives.
The public can view the sale items from today for an entry charge of 30 dinars, a stiff amount in a country where the minimum wage is just 320 dinars a month.
Ben Ali treasures under hammer
Ben Ali treasures under hammer
Syria Kurds chief says ‘all efforts’ being made to salvage deal with Damascus
- Abdi said the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the Kurds’ de facto army, remained committed to the deal
- The two sides were working toward “mutual understanding” on military integration and counter-terrorism
DAMASCUS: Syrian Kurdish leader Mazloum Abdi said Thursday that “all efforts” were being made to prevent the collapse of talks on an agreement with Damascus to integrate his forces into the central government.
The remarks came days after Aleppo saw deadly clashes between the two sides before their respective leaders ordered a ceasefire.
In March, Abdi signed a deal with Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa to merge the Kurds’ semi-autonomous administration into the government by year’s end, but differences have held up its implementation.
Abdi said the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the Kurds’ de facto army, remained committed to the deal, adding in a statement that the two sides were working toward “mutual understanding” on military integration and counter-terrorism, and pledging further meetings with Damascus.
Downplaying the year-end deadline, he said the deal “did not specify a time limit for its ending or for the return to military solutions.”
He added that “all efforts are being made to prevent the collapse of this process” and that he considered failure unlikely.
Abdi also repeated the SDF’s demand for decentralization, which has been rejected by Syria’s Islamist authorities, who took power after ousting longtime ruler Bashar Assad last year.
Turkiye, an important ally of Syria’s new leaders, sees the presence of Kurdish forces on its border as a security threat.
In Damascus this week, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan stressed the importance of the Kurds’ integration, having warned the week before that patience with the SDF “is running out.”
The SDF control large swathes of the country’s oil-rich north and northeast, and with the support of a US-led international coalition, were integral to the territorial defeat of the Daesh group in Syria in 2019.
Syria last month joined the anti-IS coalition and has announced operations against the jihadist group in recent days.
