Leïla Ben Ali herself in her residence in Abha. She and her husband have three children together: Nesrine (born out of wedlock; recognized by her father, married to Mohammad Sakher El Materi), Halima and Mohamed Zine El Abidine. Leïla Ben Ali Leïla Ben Ali (, née Trabelssi; born 24 October 1956) is the wife of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who was President of Tunisia from 1987 to 2011. She married Ben Ali in 1992. Leïla Ben Ali was the president of the Arab Women Organization and chair of the Basma Association, a charitable organization working to secure employment for the disabled. In
Zine El Abidine Ben Ali candidates were required to get endorsements from 30 political figures. Given the RCD's near-absolute dominance of the political scene, prospective opposition candidates discovered they couldn't get their nomination papers signed. The subsequent years saw the return of several Bourguiba-era restrictions. For many years, the press had been expected to practice self-censorship, but this increasingly gave way to official censorship. Amendments to the press code allowed the Interior Ministry to review all newspaper and magazine articles before publication. In 1992, the president's older brother Habib Ben Ali was tried in absentia in France for laundering the proceeds of drug trafficking, in