Tunisian presidential candidate Ayachi Zammel has been sentenced to six months in prison for falsifying documents.
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 last week on charges of falsifying popular endorsements.
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 run for president.
The head of Tunisia’s Azimoun party is one of only three approved candidates, running against incumbent Saied and Zouhair Magzhaoui, a former Saied supporter whose pan-Arabist party Echaab party was previously close to the president.
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, won power in a 2019 election. But he later orchestrated a sweeping power grab in 2021, shutting down Parliament and ruling by decree. Opposition figures were also jailed.
Saied’s two most prominent critics, the right-wing Free Destourian Party’s Abir Moussi and the Islamist party Ennahdha’s Rached Ghannouchi, have also been in prison since last year.
