TUNIS, Tunisia — One of many candidates difficult Tunisian President Kais Saied within the nation’s presidential election subsequent month has been sentenced to jail on fraud prices that his legal professional decried as politically motivated.
Two weeks after his arrest, a courtroom within the metropolis of Jendouba handed down a 20-month sentence for Ayachi Zammel on Wednesday night, after convicting him of falsifying the signatures he gathered to file the candidacy papers wanted to run for president. Zammel faces greater than 20 prices in jurisdictions all through Tunisia, together with 4 that might be heard on Thursday.
The little-known businessman and head of Tunisia’s Azimoun occasion is one in all two candidates difficult Saied within the North African nation’s Oct. 6 election.
His legal professional Abdessattar Messaoudi stated Zammel deliberate to conduct his marketing campaign from behind bars.
“That is no shock. We anticipated such a ruling given the harassment he has been subjected to since saying his candidacy,” Messaoudi instructed The Related Press.
Zammel is amongst an extended checklist of Saied’s opponents who’ve confronted felony prices and prosecution within the unstable interval main as much as October’s election. In July, a courtroom sentenced presidential candidate Lotfi Mraihi to eight months in jail on vote shopping for prices and banned him from politics. Final month, courts sentenced two candidates — Nizar Chaari and Karim Gharbi — on related signature fraud prices.
After a courtroom required Tunisia’s election authority to reinstate three candidates who had been dominated ineligible to run, one in all them — Abdellatif El Mekki — was arrested on prices that stemmed from a 2014 homicide investigation that critics have referred to as politically motivated.
Saied’s two most outstanding critics, the right-wing Free Destourian Occasion’s Abir Moussi and the Islamist occasion Ennahda’s Rached Ghannouchi, have additionally been in jail since final yr.
Civil liberty advocates have decried the crackdown as a symptom of Tunisia’s democratic backslide. Amnesty Worldwide this week referred to as it “a transparent pre-election assault on the pillars of human rights and the rule of regulation.”
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Metz reported from Rabat, Morocco.
