Tunisian presidential candidate Zammel sentenced to six months in prison | News | The Round Table Tunisian presidential candidate Ayachi Zammel has been sentenced to six months in prison for falsifying documents, the second prison sentence against him in a week, days before the country’s presidential election.
Tunisia’s TAP news agency reported on Wednesday that the Criminal Chamber of the Jendouba Court of First Instance sentenced Zammel to six months in prison for “deliberately using a fraudulent certificate”. Last week, Zammel was sentenced to 20 months in prison final stage week on charges of falsifying popular endorsements.
“It is another unjust ruling and a farce that clearly aims to weaken him in the election race, but we will justify his right to an end minute,” Zammel’s lawyer Abdessattar Massoudi informed the news agency Reuters.
The ruling underscores mounting tensions before the vote, with opposition and civil society groups voicing concerns about a potentially rigged election designed to keep President Kais Saied in power.
Zammel, a businessman who was little-known to the general public before his presidential bid, was arrested on September 2 on suspicion of falsifying the signatures he gathered to file the candidacy papers needed to dash for president.
He was released on September 6, but was almost immediately arrested again on similar accusations.
The head of Tunisia’s Azimoun party is one of only three approved candidates, racing against incumbent Saied and Zouhair Magzhaoui, a former Saied supporter whose pan-Arabist party Echaab party was previously close to the president.
Political tensions in Tunisia have ascended in the run-up to the October 6 election, particularly after an electoral commission, appointed by Saied, disqualified three conspicuous candidates earlier this month, prompting protests from opposition groups and civil society.
After a court required Tunisia’s election authority to reinstate the three candidates, one of them — Abdellatif El Mekki — was arrested on charges that stemmed from a 2014 murder investigation that critics have called politically motivated.
Saied, who is seeking a second term, acquired power in a 2019 election. But he later orchestrated an acquiring power grab in 2021, shutting down Parliament and ruling by decree. Opposition figures were also jailed.
Saied’s two most obvious critics, the right-wing Free Destourian Party’s Abir Moussi and the Islamist party Ennahdha’s Rached Ghannouchi, have also been in prison since final stage year.
Civil liberty presses have decried the crackdown as a symptom of Tunisia’s democratic backslide. Amnesty International this week called it “a clear pre-election assault on the pillars of human rights and the rule of law”.
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Published 9/26/2024