10 Facts About Abderraouf Ayadi

Abderraouf Ayadi is a Tunisian human rights activist, politician and lawyer.

On 24 July 2001, Abderraouf Ayadi co-founded the Congress of the Republic and was elected its vice-president.

Abderraouf Ayadi participated in a 32-day hunger strike against Ben Ali's regime on 18 October 2005, the protesters then formed the 18 October Coalition for Rights and Freedoms.

Abderraouf Ayadi's nomination was however disputed by some party members and the name of Tahar Hmila was shortly brought up.

Abderraouf Ayadi had lauded Samir Geagea's right-wing Lebanese Forces, whose Christian militia was responsible for the Sabra and Shatila massacre of hundreds of Palestinian refugees in 1982.

In late June 2014, Abderraouf Ayadi was one of the first to announce his candidacy for the 2014 presidential election.

On 25 February 2012, Abderraouf Ayadi declared on Tunisian TV that the first President of Tunisia, Habib Bourguiba, had been "hostile to Arab culture and Islam".

When in March 2012, the preamble of the new Tunisian Constitution was discussed, Abderraouf Ayadi supported Ennahda's proposal to keep intact Article 1 of the 1959 constitution describing the country as a republic with Arabic being its language and Islam its religion.

Abderraouf Ayadi claimed that the situation for Tunisia had even improved with the German invasion during the Second World War.

In January 2013, Abderraouf Ayadi supported the inscription of legal jihad into the Constitution of Tunisia, allegedly advocating the integration of jihadist fighters into the Tunisian Army.