PARIS (Reuters) - France intercepted a shipment of anti-riot gear, including tear gas canisters, ordered by Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali just before the Tunisian president was ousted by popular unrest, a French official said on Wednesday.

At least 78 people have died in the revolt against unemployment, corruption, poverty and repression that led to Ben Ali’s overthrow on Friday. Security forces have used tear gas, water cannon and live bullets to calm the street protests.

Customs officials at Paris’s Roissy Charles de Gaulle airport stopped the freight from leaving the country, as tension mounted across Tunisia after four weeks of street protests.

“The material was indeed stopped at Roissy and customs did their job according to regulations,” government spokesman Francois Baroin said told a weekly news briefing.

“It was a direct order from Ben Ali to companies that handle this equipment,” he said, without identifying the firms.

Baroin said the gear included bulletproof vests and tear gas canisters. He did not say when the shipment had been held up.

According to the respected defense blog “Secret Defense” in the French weekly magazine Marianne, the shipment was stopped on Friday shortly before takeoff on orders from a top official in President Nicolas Sarkozy’s government.

Paris has said there was no justification for a disproportionate use of violence to control the protests, repeating that view after the death of a French photojournalist injured in the head when a canister of tear gas was let off.

Foreign Minister Michele Alliot-Marie has come under fire this week from opposition parties over a statement she released the day before Ben Ali fled the country appearing to suggest she was offering the Tunisian government help to train security forces in handling demonstrators.

Alliot-Marie has dismissed the allegations, saying her comments were taken out of context.