Why was Prince Moulay Hicham expelled from Tunisia on the 8th of September before attending a conference on democracy? This is the question raised on Wednesday by Jeune Afrique. The Paris-based weekly examined the possible reasons of this expulsion, immediately dismissing the possibility of a Moroccan intervention. «At no time did the Moroccan authorities made such a request or took any steps in this direction» with their Tunisian counterparts, indicated to Jeune Afrique an authorized source in the Moroccan embassy in Tunis. The magazine then evokes the «Saudi and UAE pressures». Pressure to «prevent Moulay Hicham from delivering a political speech in Qatar, where he was expected on the 12th of September». «When one knows the execrable state of relations between Doha on the one hand, Riyadh and Abu Dhabi on the other hand, this initiative could only be very badly perceived by these two last capitals, especially since Moulay Hicham is related to Al-Saud,» the source said. The opportunity to recall that the prince is the cousin of Prince Al Walid «who ... has lost much of his influence since the rise of the future king Mohammed Ibn Salmane, the real strongman of the kingdom» concludes the magazine. Two days after his expulsion on September 8th, Moulay Hicham was interviewed by the Tunisian blog Nawaat about his expulsion. He had not given any explanation, preferring to put forward his will not to «speculate» in front of the questions of the journalist about a possible involvement of the Moroccan, Saudi or Emirati authorities.
