Oct 27, 2016

The Tunisian town of Jendouba, near the Algerian border and nestled under the Chaambi Mountains, doesn’t see a lot of Western tourists this time of year. So when two white American men stepped off a collective taxi coming from the capital, Tunis, the afternoon of Oct. 23, people were naturally curious — though no one immediately thought they might be terrorists.

The men, identified by police as Nathan Wells Lawwill, 32, and Patrick Alan Lawwill, 31, from Lansing, Michigan, arrived in Tunis from the United States over a year ago. The brothers told residents and police that they were in Jendouba to enroll in graduate-level computer science courses. According to Abdelatif Ayadi, the police chief of nearby Ezzahwa, local police first kept an eye on the men as a precautionary measure for the visitors’ safety.

With the help of a young local woman, the brothers rented a small apartment above a cafe in Ezzahwa, not far from Jendouba’s main university, paying 150 dinars ($66) in cash for one month’s rent. Lotfi Ouergli, the landlord and owner of the Jawhra Cafe, told Al-Monitor that he was immediately struck by the appearance of the men, which seemed out of the ordinary to him for Americans: Both were very pale and unshaven, sporting big boots and clothes several sizes too large.

The older brother, Ouergli noted, seemed to be the domineering one in the relationship, while the younger brother appeared paranoid. Ouergli became nervous when he heard them listening to television in Arabic and when the older brother began talking in earnest about praying and going to the mosque, though he insisted the men were polite and respectful. On Oct. 24, almost one full day after they arrived in Jendouba, the brothers were called into the neighborhood police station, in part after it was discovered they were not enrolled at any university in town and had never previously studied computer science, according to Ouergli.

In the past few years, Jendouba has been on high alert for terrorist activity. Because of its geographical proximity to Algeria and the Chaambi Mountains, terrorist groups including the Islamic State (IS), Ansar al-Sharia and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb all have a presence. In February 2014, three insurgents set up a decoy roadblock and killed four people. In February of this year, 16 terrorists were arrested following search operations and violent clashes, while two explosive devices near the city’s Bilal mosque were discovered and defused in June. According to police sources who spoke with Al-Monitor, since the revolution over 200 suspected terrorists and Islamists have been arrested.