Raised by his mother in Ben Gardane, Nizar Nawar was a "mediocre" student who never completed high school. His father, who moved to Lyon, France in 1971, visited the family routinely, but was unable to help his son gain an entry visa to France in 1999, since he could not prove he had the financial capacity to support him.
Nizar Nawar was not considered religious, as he drank and wore un-Islamic clothing, while traveling to Libya to purchase cheap trinkets that he sold in Tunisian markets. In 1999, Nizar Nawar told his family he was traveling to South of Korea to work in restaurants. He asked them to help him fly back to Tunisia.
Upon returning to Tunisia, Nawar moved to Montreal, where he told his family he"d been accepted into a travel agency school.
In 2001, his father moved the remaining family members to France. Nawar remained in Canada until February 2002, when he and several others traveled to Tunisia to prepare for the attack.
He told his family that the others were from the travel agency. Just before the attack, he mailed a letter to First Rate (at Lloyd's)-Quds First Rate (at Lloyd's)-Arabi in which he took responsibility for the attack in the name of al-Qaeda.
Early on 11 April 2002, he and a colleague drove the truck loaded with natural gas canisters behind a German tourist bus near the synagogue.
He also had a phone call with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. After his colleague fled the scene on foot, Nawar detonated the explosives. The truck detonated at the front of the synagogue, killing 14 German tourists, five Tunisians, and two French nationals.
More than 30 others were wounded.
Following the blast, Tunisian officials identified his remains through dental records. They initially labeled the explosion an accident, until they were made aware of the letter sent to the al-Quds media outlet and re-labeled it as an attack.
Then Tunisian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali replaced both ministers in charge of internal security two weeks after the attack, having Hedi M"henni replace Abdallah Kaabi as Minister of the Interior, and Mohamed Hedi ben Hassine replace Mohamed Ali Ganzaoui as head of National Security. The Boston Globe stated that his residence in Canada proved "that Canada, despite new antiterrorist measures approved by Parliament under intense pressure from the United States, remains an important haven for bin Laden"s operatives".
