# Abu Bakr bin Al-Habib Abdul Hakim

Boubaker bin Al-Habib Abdul Hakim, also known as Abu Muqatil (August 1, 1983 – November 26, 2016), was a Tunisian accused of the assassination of Tunisian politician Mohamed Brahmi.

## Early life

Abu Bakr Al-Hakim was born on August 1, 1983, in Paris to Tunisian parents Al-Habib Hakim and Habiba Ayari. In 1998, his family settled in an apartment in the 19th arrondissement in northeastern Paris, where he lived with his mother, two sisters, and two brothers. He studied accounting at a vocational high school.

## Movements between France, Syria, and Iraq

In 2002, Abu Bakr Al-Hakim made his first trip to Syria to study Islamic Sharia and frequented the Al-Fath Islamic Institute in Damascus. In January 2003, he returned to France, participating in protests against the Iraq War, but later disappeared from the radar of the French intelligence services as he returned to Syria and then to Iraq under the pretext of "humanitarian aid," before going back to Syria in March 2003, and then to Iraq, just before the fall of Baghdad to U.S. forces.
In Baghdad, he stayed at the Palestine Hotel, frequented by many journalists, where he occasionally offered translation services to the Red Cross, according to his lawyer.
Multiple sources indicate that he urged his friends in Paris via a French radio station in Iraq to fight the Americans. After the collapse of the Iraqi regime in April 2003, Al-Hakim fled to Syria, where he was arrested and deported to France in May 2003. He worked in street markets selling clothes, got married, and had a daughter named Aisha. In March 2004, he returned to Syria and contacted many elements in Paris, including his brother Ridwan (19 years old), who joined the Iraqi resistance and was killed in a U.S. airstrike in Fallujah, Iraq, in July 2004.
Ultimately, Al-Hakim was arrested in Syria while attempting to enter Iraq without documents in September 2004. After his deportation from Syria, he was arrested by French intelligence upon his arrival in France and placed in preventive detention. Weakened by his imprisonment in Syria, Al-Hakim informed his lawyer that he was regularly subjected to torture and ill-treatment. His lawyer noted that he never planned any attacks in France and did not target French interests.
Al-Hakim, accused of forming a "criminal gang connected to a terrorist project," was imprisoned in Fleury-Mérogis Prison in the Paris region after 9 months of detention in Syria due to his attempt to infiltrate Iraq to fight the Americans.
In May 2008, he was sentenced on June 14, 2008, to 7 years of hard labor, with at least two-thirds of the sentence to be served, for creating a nucleus of jihad towards Iraq. He was released in January 2011.

## Entry to Tunisia

He entered Tunisia and resided in the Fajja locality in the city of Mornaguia in Manouba Governorate and joined Ansar al-Sharia.
In July 2013, a few days after the assassination of Mohamed Brahmi, Tunisian Interior Minister Lotfi Ben Jeddou stated that Abu Bakr Al-Hakim was involved in the assassination of Mohamed Brahmi, and in addition to his involvement in this assassination, he was also "involved in the case of weapons confiscation in Mnihla, Medenine, and Douar Hicher."

## Appearance in video recording

In December 2014, in a video issued by the Al-Itisam Media Foundation affiliated with ISIS, Abu Bakr Al-Hakim appeared in the video, filmed in Raqqa, in which he claimed responsibility for the assassination of Mohamed Brahmi and Chokri Belaid in Tunisia.

## Death

On November 26, 2016, the Pentagon announced that Abu Bakr Al-Hakim was killed in an airstrike by the United States in Raqqa, Syria.