CAIRO (Reuters) – An Egyptian court has upheld a one-year prison sentence with labour against former presidential hopeful Ahmed Tantawy and his campaign manager Mohamed Abou El-Diar on charges of forging election documents, Tantawy’s legal team said on Tuesday.
Tantawy was the most prominent figure to challenge Abdel Fattah al-Sisi last year for a third term, which he won with 89.6% of the vote.
He suspended his campaign before the election, citing harassment and arrests targeting dozens of his allies and family members that prevented him from securing the required number of public endorsements to appear on the ballot.
Egyptian authorities denied any wrongdoing and accused Tantawy’s campaign of distributing unauthorised copies of endorsement forms to gather public support.
The original court decision in May, reaffirmed by Egypt’s Misdemeanour Appeals Court on Monday, bars Tantawy from running for office for five years and orders him to pay a fine of 20,000 Egyptian pounds ($395).
Khaled Ali, a prominent human rights lawyer and member of Tantawy’s defence, said in a post on Facebook on Tuesday that the appeal process was marred by irregularities.
Ali said lawyers struggled for months to confirm court dates, with hearings appearing absent from official schedules and case files missing from court registries.
The public prosecution was not immediately available to comment on the ruling or on Ali’s allegations over the process.
($1 = 50.7300 Egyptian pounds)
(Reporting by Cairo bureau; Editing by Alison Williams)
