Mother of Tunisia gunman says son ‘a victim’

The mother of the gunman who killed 38 on a Tunisian beach claims in an interview with Britain’s Sunday Times that her son was a victim of “brainwashing” who previously would not have hurt a mouse.

Talking at her home in the farming town of Gaafour, she accuses militants of “brainwashing” her son and claims he too was “a victim like all the others.”

“When they told me my son had killed all these people I said no, it’s impossible,” Radhia Manai, 49, tells The Sunday Times on Saturday

“I can’t believe it,” his mother adds. “Once there was a mouse in the house and I asked Seifeddine to kill it and he refused saying, ‘I can’t kill anything.’

“God bless the victims, all those people and their poor families, and I feel so sorry but I want to tell them it wasn’t my son who did this, it was another Seifeddine.”

“I want to know who is the head of all this, who did this to him and I want them to go to prison or be killed,” she adds.

— AFP