CAIRO, Egypt
An Egyptian appeals court on
Monday upheld a one-year jail sentence for opposition politician Ahmad
al-Tantawi, who was then arrested "inside the courthouse," lawyer
Nabeh Elganadi told reporters.Opposition politician Ahmad al-Tantawi (C)
Tantawi, who had hoped to run
against President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in elections last year, was found guilty
of election campaign irregularities in February.
"The sentence at the time
was suspended on bail until the appeal today," Elganadi said, adding that
Tantawi was arrested as soon as the decision was declared.
The former lawmaker was also
"barred from running in parliamentary elections for five years,"
according to human rights group the Egyptian Commission for Rights and
Freedoms.
The Matareya Misdemeanour
Court also upheld sentences against 22 members of Tantawi's campaign team,
including its director Mohamed Aboul Deyar, of "one year in prison with
hard labor," Elganadi said.
They had been convicted of
"circulating election-related papers without official authorization"
in the lead-up to the election, which Sisi won in his third landslide victory.
Tantawi had accused
authorities of hampering his effort to collect the endorsements required to run
in the presidential election, under various pretexts including computer
malfunctions.
Tantawi instead asked his
supporters to fill out unofficial "popular endorsement" forms — a
tactic the authorities labeled as tantamount to election fraud.
He ultimately collected only
14,000 endorsements — well short of the 25,000 needed from at least 15 of
Egypt's 27 governorates to enable him to run.
Alternatively, he would have
had to garner nominations from at least 20 parliamentary deputies.
The former member of
parliament withdrew his candidacy before the December vote, citing harassment
and obstruction.
The National Election
Authority announced Sisi's victory on December 18 with 89.6 percent of the
vote.
He had run against three
relatively unknowns: Hazem Omar of the Republican People's Party, Farid Zahran
(Egyptian Social Democratic Party) and Abdel-Sanad Yamama (Wafd Party).
According to Human Rights
Watch, the authorities deployed "an array of repressive tools to eliminate
potential challengers," including jailing another prospective candidate,
Hisham Kassem.
Cairo has long been criticised
for its human rights record, with rights groups estimating that tens of
thousands of political prisoners remain behind bars, many of them in brutal
conditions.
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