Abu Mariam Brigade (Jihadi Entity, Tunisia)

• Local Name: N/a
• Transliteration: Katibat Abu Mariam
• Alternatives: N/a
• Status: 2014 – 2016 (Defeated)
• Conflicts: Tunisian Islamist Militancy

The Abu Mariam Brigade [KAM; Katibet Abu Mariem] was a small Salafi jihadi outfit active in northeastern Tunisia. The group had approximately thirty members and was reportedly linked to elements within the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant [DaIISh; Dawlat al-Islamiya fi-Iraq wal ash-Sham].¹ It was active in the towns of Hammamet and Nabeul.² The KAM was headed by Salim Bouhouch [aka Abu Mariam].³

The KAM was formed somewhere in late 2014 or early 2015 with the aim of attacking Tunisia’s security forces.⁴ Following its formation, the group started recruiting jihadis, raised funds and began surveying potential targets.⁵ The Tunisian authorities eventually learned of the group’s activities and police rounded up about twenty of its cadres on Feb. 11, 2015.⁶ Investigations revealed that an attack by KAM fighters on a paramilitary police post in Grombalia had been imminent.⁷ The group had furthermore planned to abduct security personnel and subsequently kill them by slitting their throats.⁸

Due to the lack of concrete evidence, the arrested KAM militants were all released within a few days.⁹ Their leader Bouhouch was briefly apprehended by police in April 2015.¹⁰ The Tunisian authorities assumed that the module had been dismantled.¹¹ The KAM’s associates did not halt their jihadi activities however. Some of the outfit’s cadres were allegedly implicated in the March 2016 incursion into the southern town of Ben Guerdane by the Islamic State’s Sabratha Network [DaISN].¹² In May 2016, Tunisian security forces arrested several KAM operatives in Hammamet as they were trying to set up a new jihadi group.¹³