Couscous connection issued for Habib Ben Ali. The trial of the "couscous connection", the nickname given to the drug trafficking network, opened on 17 November 1992 in the Fourteenth Chamber of the Paris Criminal Court. Habib Ben Ali was said to have been the bag carrier for the proceeds of the sales of heroin and cocaine trafficked between Tunisia, Amsterdam and Paris, and was charged with laundering drug money and breaking narcotics laws. He did not appear. The normal broadcast in Tunisia of the news program of France's second television channel was suspended during the trial. On 30 November 1992 Ben Ali
Couscous connection was found guilty "in absentia" and sentenced to ten years imprisonment. As part of the same case 23 other gang members, mostly Tunisian, were sentenced to various punishments. On 1 December 1992 Ben Ali's French lawyer met his client in Tunis. The lawyer gave a press conference in which he claimed there was no evidence that Ben Ali deserved the sentence. He said the conviction was due to political manipulation. He blamed Islamic fundamentalists for concocting the charges in an effort to blacken the family name. Mezri Haddad signed an article in "Libération" in 1992 about the "Couscous connection". According