Zine El Abidine Ben Ali
Zine El Abidine Ben AliReuters

A plane originally intended for Tunisia's toppled president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali has been sold to Turkish Airlines, six years after it was grounded following his ouster, AFP reported on Sunday.

The Turkish firm bought the Airbus A340 for 181 million dinars ($78 million), Tunisair spokeswoman Amal Bourguiba said. She did not provide a date for the sale.

The A340 had arrived in the French airport of Bordeaux in the autumn of 2010 to be equipped for Ben Ali's use, but a popular uprising in Tunisia toppled him early the next year.

Tunisair, in a statement later on Sunday, said it had obtained a good price, compared with the 250 million dinars paid in 2009 to order the plane, and said it would save on the parking costs in Bordeaux.

Ben Ali currently lives in exile in Jeddah, having fled to Saudi Arabia with his wife during the mass uprising against his regime in January 2011 – an uprising which is seen as the beginning of the so-called “Arab Spring” protests.

According to French daily Sud-Ouest, Ben Ali only used the plane once to test it before it was outfitted.

Tunisair put the plane on the market in January 2012, saying it had been outfitted with a living room and bedroom "to suit the travel needs of a head of state".

Another Airbus A340 -- this one luxuriously furnished for former Libyan president Muammar Qaddafi -- has also been grounded for years at the French airport of Perpignan, according to AFP.

The plane, which a Kuwaiti firm was once interested in buying, still in theory belongs to Libya, a country that has been wracked by chaos since the 2011 revolt that toppled and killed Qaddafi.

Since leaving Tunisia, Ben Ali has already been sentenced twice to life in prison for presiding over the bloody crackdown on the uprising against him.

He has also separately been sentenced to decades in prison along with his wife for embezzlement, illegal possession of narcotics, housing fraud and abuse of power.

In 2013, Ben Ali was given a five-year jail term in absentia and fined 3.5 million euros for corruption.

Following his ouster, Tunisia held democratic elections for the first time, which were won by the Islamist Ennahda party, which is affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood. Ennahda was forced to step down shortly after being elected.