Egyptian presidential hopeful Ahmed al-Tantawi gives an interview at his office in central Cairo on October 12, 2023. AFP
The court handed Tantawy’s campaign coordinator, Mohamed Abu El-Diyar, the same sentences over the same charges, with both granted bail of EGP 20,000 pending appeal.
Additionally, the court sentenced 21 members of Tantawy's campaign to one year in jail for the same charges.
Furthermore, the court banned Tantawy from running in parliamentary elections for five years.
On 13 October, Tantawy, a former MP and former head of the leftist Karama (Dignity) Party, ended his campaign for the presidential elections, nearly 24 hours before the candidacy deadline, after he failed to gather 25,000 endorsements to run.
Before his withdrawal, Tantawy called in September 2023 for his supporters to fill out unofficial endorsement forms to present them to the election authority if he failed to obtain the official ones.
Tantawy reversed the step hours after the arrest of eight people across the governorates of Alexandria, Giza, Faiyum, and Suez for “forging endorsements for a presidential hopeful.”
In November, the country’s Public Prosecution referred Tantawy and a number of his campaign staff for trial over charges of printing and circulating papers used in the electoral process without permission from the competent authority.
Today’s verdicts are not final and can be appealed.
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