Tunis - The former leader of a Tunisian Islamist party banned in the 1990s is expected to, on Saturday, appeal a judge's decision to jail him just weeks after his release from prison, his lawyer told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa on Friday.

Lawyer Sami Ben Omar told dpa that Sadok Chourou, 62, would appeal a one-year prison sentence passed against him on December 13, little more than a month after he was conditionally released after serving 17 years in prison.

Chourou was the leader of Tunisia's Islamist al-Nahda, or "Renaissance," Party when Tunisian authorities banned it in 1991. Military courts sentenced him and hundreds of other members to prison on charges of seeking to establish an Islamic state in Tunisia in the early
1990s.

In November, to mark the 21st anniversary of his coming to office, Tunisian President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali ordered the release of the last remaining prisoners from the party, including Chourou.

But police rearrested the former opposition leader on December 3, after he gave interviews to journalists in which he described his imprisonment and said that he hoped the government would allow al- Nahda "to act politically, in a legal framework." On December 13, Tunis' Court of First Instance sentenced him to a year in prison on charges of "maintaining an unrecognized organization."

In a statement published Friday, Tunisia's unlicensed International Association for the Support of Political Prisoners condemned Chourou's imprisonment.

The human rights group said that prosecutors initially charged him with "spreading false news" for alleging, in a December interview with London's al-Hiwar satellite television station, that Tunisian opposition members had been tortured in custody. The group said prosecutors later amended the charges to "maintaining an unrecognized organization."

Tunisian authorities banned the Nahda Party in 1991, saying it was "an extremist organization that advocates attacks on goods and people to realize its objectives." Its leaders were convicted of trying to launch a coup against Ben Ali in 1992.

Al-Nahda's leaders in exile have repeatedly denied trying to topple the government by force, saying they seek an Islamic democracy through democratic means. (dpa)