Potential Tunisian presidential candidate Abir Moussi was sentenced to two years in prison, AP News reported.
Moussi, head of the Free Destourian Party, was arrested in October after criticising the electoral process and the presidential decrees guiding it, saying there was a lack of transparency. The verdict was another defeat for the country’s young opposition challenging President Kais Saied seeking to run for another term.
Following a complaint by Tunisia’s electoral authority, she was found guilty of violating a controversial anti-fake news decree that prohibited the dissemination of information defaming or harming others. However, the law has been widely used to prosecute those who criticise the authorities.
Moussi’s lawyer Nafaa Laribi stated on Tuesday that she still intended to run in the 6 October presidential election and that, unlike other candidates, nothing in the sentence prevented her from running. Laribi announced Moussi’s intention to file an appeal.
Since Moussi and other leading opposition figures are in jail, Saied is not expected to face electoral competition in a country that used to be the Middle East and North Africa’s most progressive democracy.
A sharp critic of Islamists such as jailed Ennahda leader Rached Ghannouchi, Moussi was an official in the longtime ruling party of president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Over the years, she has become one of Tunisia’s most popular and contentious politicians.
