TUNIS: Tunisian presidential candidate Ayachi Zammel was handed a 20-month prison term for charges related to forging voter endorsements Wednesday but will still stand in next month’s election, his lawyer told AFP.
Zammel, a former lawmaker and head of a small liberal party, is one of only two candidates approved by Tunisia’s electoral authority ISIE to challenge President Kais Saied in the October 6 poll.
One of Zammel’s lawyers, Abdessatar Messaoudi, said a court in the northwestern city of Jendouba issued the sentence which the defense team “will appeal.”
Messaoudi said the ruling was not final and does not prevent 43-year-old Zammel from remaining on the presidential ballot.
“He is still a presidential candidate, and his team will keep campaigning,” the lawyer said.
“Nothing can put an end to his candidacy apart from death.”
In the 2019 election that brought Saied to power, businessman Nabil Karoui made it to the second round behind bars.
Zammel, a businessman who was little-known to the general public before his presidential bid, was arrested on September 2 on suspicion of forging endorsements.
He was released on September 6, but was almost immediately arrested again on similar accusations.
Saied, 66, the incumbent and frontrunner, was democratically elected but orchestrated a sweeping power grab in 2021 and has since ruled by decree.
ISIE earlier this month announced the final list of approved candidates: Saied, Zammel and former lawmaker Zouhair Maghzaoui, 59, who had supported the president’s power grab.
The election board dismissed the presidential bids of three other hopefuls despite court orders in their favor.
Human Rights Watch accused ISIE of having “intervened to skew the ballot in favor of Saied,” with at least eight prospective candidates prosecuted, convicted or imprisoned in the run-up to the election.
“Holding elections amid such repression makes a mockery of Tunisians’ right to participate in free and fair elections,” said the New York-based advocacy group.
The European Union has said Zammel’s arrest and the exclusion of the three candidates demonstrated “a continued limitation of the democratic space” in Tunisia.
