[10] The group also campaigned for the release of Islamist prisoners, such as Omar Abdel-Rahman, Abu Qatada and Tunisians who had fought with al-Qaeda in Iraq and are held in Iraqi jails.

[9] Members of Ansar al-Sharia have regularly taken part in protests in Tunisia against perceived blasphemy and have been suspected of involvement in a number of violent incidents.

[18] In March 2020, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb leader Abdelmalek Droukdel announced Ben Hassine's death but did not say when he died.

[19] In its weekly newspaper al-Naba, in an article eulogizing Shaykh Abu Layla Kamal Zarruq al-Tunisi al-Qurashi, a Tunisian leader in the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, the Islamic State severely criticized Ansar al-Sharia in Tunisia and its leader Abu Iyad, saying: The Ansar ash-Shari’ah organization, which was at the forefront, suffered from several problems, the most important being the misguidance of its leader, Abu ‘Iyad, and his promotion of Ayman al-Zawahiri ideas regarding their intention to make Tunisia an ’ard da’wah" (land of invitation) and not an "ard jihad" (land of waging jihad), which reassured the taghut so-called "post-Arab revolutions governments" that they would not fight them, instead asking them to give them room to simply "invite".

It also suffered from Abu ‘Iyad’s ideas that were restricted to the country, focused on limiting the work to Tunisia, and based on his desire to lead the global jihad, despite his lack of experience and his weakness, which in turn led his organization in to the abyss when the new taghut revealed to them its new face.