During the past months, the news of bank robbery crimes, either by breaking down their doors and seizing money, or by raiding bank offices and threatening their employees with weapons to loot their safes, was the weekly article that topped the front pages of Tunisian newspapers and news websites, as headlines such as “breaking into a bank branch and threatening employees with weapons and looting tens of millions,” a frequent occurrence in the country.
The security authorities in the governorate of Gafsa (south of the country) revealed that a bank institution in the region had been subjected to a raid and theft of funds, on Thursday, December 8, adding that a masked person raided the bank’s office and threatened employees and aides with a hunting rifle before seizing a sum of money by force and then fleeing. .
Some media outlets revealed that the security units are still continuing research and investigations to identify and arrest the perpetrator.
This operation was not the first of its kind in the context of crimes of bank raids and money theft, but it appears to be an extension of a phenomenon that has escalated in an unprecedented manner. According to research revealed by the security services, unknown persons threw stones at night at a bank branch belonging to a private banking institution before its outer crystal was smashed, the front door was taken off, access to the interior, part of the bank’s contents were smashed, and another part was looted.
In the year 2021, a bank branch in Ben Arous Governorate, south of the capital, Tunis, was subjected to a theft of a sum of money, after it was stormed by a group of thieves.
Sources from the Ministry of the Interior revealed at the time that the theft of the amount of money from the bank branch was carried out in an “organized manner,” noting that the perpetrators of the theft operation cut off the electrical wires of the surveillance cameras and the alarm device. That they cut off the electricity and then pierced the bank’s safe and seized the amount of money inside, according to the Ministry of Interior, which did not disclose the value of the amounts that were stolen.
Muhammad Ali Al-Rizqi, the general secretary of the Republican Security Syndicate in Tunisia, revealed that the phenomenon is mainly due to the spread of unemployment, poverty and marginalization that many Tunisians experience.
Al-Rizqi said in an interview with Sky News Arabia: “It has become clear that the phenomenon of armed robbery on banks and raids begins by planning the crime first by simulating some Western films, then the operations are carried out with mass raids, according to him.
And he continued: “Reducing the phenomenon requires tightening control over vehicles transporting bank money, noting that all banking branches in Tunisia are secured by police services close to them, but this did not prevent the occurrence of raids that were confronted by security units as soon as they were notified of the attempt to commit a crime.
And the phenomenon continued in a way that was no longer confined to other regions, as a bank branch in the Ariana region (north of the capital) was subjected, in July, to a robbery by a masked person who seized a sum of money by threatening with a plastic gun, and the security authorities said at the time that they had tracking down the accused and arresting him, while the value of the seized sums was also not determined.
In addition to the incursions, a banking institution witnessed a robbery carried out by an agent assigned to guard a car to transfer money to a bank when he seized an amount of 100,000 dinars ($30,000) before he was arrested a week after the incident and seized the looted funds. Journalist and political and social analyst Murad Alaleh explained the spread of the phenomenon of storming and armed robbery of banks and banks with the desire for easy profit and obtaining money without appreciating the consequences of the way some people intend to do so.
Murad Alala said in statements to Sky News Arabia: “Today, obtaining money, regardless of the method, has become the motive behind committing such crimes. There is a desire to obtain money arbitrarily and without appreciating the legal, economic and social consequences of such types of crime.”
The spokesman continued: “The reasons that drive young people or even the elderly to commit such crimes revolve mainly around the urgent need for money, and the blockage of social and professional horizons in front of them. Towards Europe, in the end, the process results from a state of despair and blockage of prospects in which these people are floundering.”
In his interview with the website, he points out that “there is a state of normalization with crime and underestimation of its consequences. This phenomenon can only be explained by normalization with crime, and it is also a phenomenon that has spread widely in the country.”
#Tunisia. #Bank #raids #robberies #nightmare #disturbs #security