Tunisian presidential hopeful Ayachi Zammel was rearrested shortly after being released from pretrial detention under suspicion of forging ballot signatures; his lawyer informed AFP on Friday.
Zammel, 43, is one of the two candidates approved by the electoral authority, ISIE, to challenge President Kais Saied in the upcoming October 6 election.
Following four days in police custody, a court in Manouba, located west of the capital, Tunis, granted his temporary release on Thursday night, according to his lawyer, Abdessatar Messaoudi.
However, Zammel was apprehended shortly afterwards on the same suspicions related to ballot signatures, as relayed by Messaoudi. He is scheduled to appear before a judge later today.
The businessman and former parliamentarian Zammel led Azimoun, a small liberal party, until late August when he resigned to run for president as an independent candidate.
His arrest on Monday occurred just hours before ISIE released the final list of presidential hopefuls for next month’s vote, which included Zammel, Saied, and former parliamentarian Zouhair Maghzaoui.
However, the list excluded three other hopefuls, disregarding court rulings that had granted them appeals after the electoral authority rejected them initially.
Those omitted were Imed Daimi, an adviser to former president Moncef Marzouki, former minister Mondher Zenaidi, and opposition party leader Abdellatif Mekki. Experts believed they had a chance of winning against Saied.
Saied, the leading contender in the election, ascended to power in the 2019 election but subsequently engineered a comprehensive power grab in 2021 and has since governed by decree.
Human Rights Watch revealed that at least eight prospective candidates have been “prosecuted, convicted, or imprisoned” in the lead-up to the election.
The group expressed on Wednesday that ISIE “has intervened to skew the ballot in favour of Saied.”
“Conducting elections amid such repression makes a mockery of Tunisians’ right to participate in free and fair elections,” it added.