Ayachi Zammel, one of the two candidates in the October 6 presidential election in Tunisia against outgoing President Kais Saied, was immediately arrested after his provisional release on Thursday pending trial for “falsification of sponsorships”, one of his lawyers said on Friday.
The court in Manouba, a town in the western suburbs of Tunis, decided on his provisional release on Thursday, the president of his defense committee, Abdessatar Messaoudi, told AFP.
But as soon as he was released, Mr Zammel was taken by the National Guard (gendarmerie) to Jendouba, 150 km from Tunis, to “appear on Friday before the prosecutor’s office of the (local) court in a case linked to sponsorships”, according to the lawyer.
Unless there is a final conviction, being under arrest does not theoretically prevent Mr Zammel from being a candidate. In the previous election in 2019, businessman Nabil Karoui was in the second round while he was in prison.
President Saied, democratically elected in 2019, has been accused of authoritarianism since a coup on July 25, 2021, in which he granted himself full powers.
Mr Zammel, 43, an industrialist and leader of a small, little-known liberal party, was arrested on Monday on suspicion of “false sponsorship” and had been in pre-trial detention since Wednesday.
He is one of three candidates selected in a “final” list unveiled on Monday by the electoral authority, Isie, alongside President Kais Saïed and Zouhair Maghzaoui, 59, a former MP for the pan-Arabist left.
The authority has dismissed three other serious competitors to Mr Saied, rejecting rulings reinstating them in the presidential race from the Administrative Court.
On Thursday, the European Union denounced attacks on democracy in Tunisia following the arrest of Mr Zammel and the exclusion of the three other candidates, regretting decisions that had the consequence of “limiting the range of choices for Tunisian citizens”.
“The latest developments demonstrate a continued limitation of democratic space” in Tunisia, deplored a spokesperson for the EU diplomatic service.
The candidate selection process was considered particularly difficult this year, particularly collecting the necessary 10,000 endorsements (from at least 500 voters in 10 different constituencies).
On Wednesday, the NGO Human Rights Watch further deplored that “at least eight” potential candidates had been “convicted, imprisoned or prosecuted”, preventing them from being candidates.
