Tunisia pardons former presidential candidate, reports say

Tunisia pardoned a former candidate in the 2024 presidential election who had received prison sentences totalling more than 30 years in separate cases, reports said Thursday.

Ayachi Zammel was one of only two candidates allowed to run against President Kais Saied. He was arrested shortly after electoral authorities approved his candidacy.

The Tunisian presidency said Saied pardoned more than 2,400 people, but did not name them.

Zammel, a little-known businessman and former parliamentarian, won about seven percent of the presidential vote. Saied won more than 90 percent.

The charges against Zammel had included forging ballot signatures to stand in the election.

Reports also said the pardon covered Wadie Jary, the former head of the Tunisian Football Federation, who was sentenced last year to four years in prison on corruption charges.

Saied was elected in 2019. Two years later, he carried out a broad power grab, dissolved parliament and revised the constitution. Many of his opponents are in prison or in exile, and non-governmental groups have condemned what they describe as a rollback of rights and freedoms.