Tunisian blogger: Abu Dhabi tried to assassinate me after failing to tempt me with money

Rashid Al-Khayari, a Tunisian blogger and the owner of Essada website, accused the UAE of attempting to lure him and assassinate him in Tunisia on the backdrop of revealing details of the assassination of Tunisian flight engineer Mohamed Zouari.

Al-Khayari said that an attempt had been made to tempt him and then assassinate him, which was carried out by people he described as intelligence agents at a hotel in Tunis, on the pretext of discussing an offer to launch an African television channel, before he exposed their plan.

The Tunisian blogger accused the UAE of trying to tempt him at the beginning by offering financial incentives to change the editorial line of the site he supervises so that he would not attack the UAE or Saudi Arabia, especially Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman.

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Al-Khayari added: “I was surprised during the meeting with an Algerian agent who never talked on the subject of the African channel branch. The man revealed during his meeting with me and my colleague in the site office that his arrival in Tunisia was for the sole reason that the Emiratis were very worried about the editorial line of Essada website that exposes the practices of the Saudi and UAE regimes in the Arab region.”

He went on: “The man openly offered us to sell the site’s editorial line to Emiratis in exchange for whatever money and prospects we ask for.” He also warned us and said, “you know very well that the UAE has the upper hand in the region.” The Tunisian Ministry of the Interior said in December that it revealed the real names of Zouari assassination perpetrators on 15 December 2016, noting that large sums of money were spent on the operation that was prepared for outside the country.