A Paris court was informed on Tuesday that former president Nicolas Sarkozy, contrary to his repeated denials, was involved in efforts to overturn an international warrant for the arrest of Libyan military intelligence chief Abdullah Senussi, as part of an alleged reciprocal deal to secure funding from the Gaddafi regime for his 2007 election campaign.
The accusation was made by Sarkozy’s former long-serving chief of staff and right-hand man Claude Guéant, 81, in a written submission to the court, as he was absent from the proceedings on health grounds.
The arrest warrant for Senussi was issued by France after a Paris court found him guilty in 1999 in absentia of masterminding the mid-air bombing of a French airliner over the Ténéré desert in Niger, killing all 170 passengers and crew aboard. The existence of the international warrant restricted travel for Senussi, who is also suspected of planning the 1988 mid-air bombing of Pan-Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, in Scotland, which killed 259 people.
The Paris court is hearing the appeals against the convictions of Sarkozy, Guéant, and seven others handed down at the end of their trial last year (the prosecution services are appealing the dismissal of charges against a tenth defendant) for their various roles in attempting to secure funds for Sarkozy’s campaign from the regime of the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.
Sarkozy is appealing a conviction for “criminal conspiracy” to obtain funding from Tripoli, for which he was handed a five-year jail term, in what is effectively a retrial of the former president and his co-defendants, which opened on March 16th and is due to last until June 3rd.
Nicolas Sarkozy on trial for alleged illegal campaign funding from Gaddafi regime
According to the prosecution, Senussi, who was also Gaddafi’s brother-in-law, was a central figure in the negotiations for the illegal campaign funding.
Under questioning last week, when he again firmly denied having played any part in securing funding from Tripoli, Sarkozy, 71, turned on his two former closest allies, Guéant and Brice Hortefeux, insisting he was unaware of the negotiations to overturn the warrant against Senussi, which he said were initiated by Guéant and Hortefeux.
“I’m not ashamed of what I did,” Sarkozy told the court. “When I see certain things in the investigation notes, I don’t think that’s the case for everyone,” he added, pointedly accusing Guéant and Hortefeux.
Guéant's reaction was immediate. In a three-page statement dated April 11th and presented to the court today by his lawyer, Guéant said that “the request for a study regarding Senussi’s situation came from Gaddafi himself” and detailed how Sarkozy, on an official visit to Libya in July 2007, barely two months after his election, had called Guéant to his side during a dinner with Gadaffi. This was, said Guéant, “to have Gaddafi repeat in my presence the preoccupation he had expressed to [Sarkozy] concerning Senussi. Like he often did, Nicolas Sarkozy concluded by saying ‘Claude, look into that’.”
Asked by Guéant’s lawyer, Philippe Bouchez El Ghozi, for a reaction to the statement, the former French president declared that he offers “the most formal denial” of Guéant’s accusations. “I have absolutely no recollection of this scene in the middle of a banquet,” he added. “I don’t see myself saying to Gaddafi, during an official dinner, ‘hey, tell me, could you repeat what you’ve just said to me?’”
“Does that mean that Claude Guéant is lying?” asked Bouchez El Ghozi. “It means that we don’t have the same recollection,” replied Sarkozy, adding: “If Mr Guéant is able to speak, then he should come to the courtroom.”
Sarkozy said he thought it was possible that Guéant was confused and that he had mixed up a trip Sarkozy had made to Libya in 2005 when interior minister, and when, he said – repeating the substance of a statement he gave to the judicial investigation – that Gaddafi had indeed spoken to him about Senussi’s arrest warrant.
The presiding magistrate, Olivier Géron, then asked Sarkozy whether he had told Guéant in 2005 “Claude, look into that”. The former president replied he had not said that to Guéant, and that such a scene never existed.
Secret meetings with Senussi in Tripoli
Ex-French President Nicolas Sarkozy receives a five-year prison sentence
The prosecution case against Sarkozy partly centers on the period of his second term as interior minister, from 2005-2007, when Sarkozy was preparing to launch his bid for the presidency. Guéant was his chief of staff, a role he continued in, as secretary general of the Élysée Palace, after Sarkozy’s election in 2007.
The judicial investigation into the alleged funding established that on October 1st 2005, Guéant traveled to Tripoli to meet secretly with Senussi. One week after that meeting, Sarkozy, as interior minister, visited Tripoli to meet with Gaddafi, officially to discuss illegal immigration to Europe from Libyan shores.
It also established that on December 21st 2005, Brice Hortefeux, a childhood friend and loyal lieutenant of Sarkozy’s, who at the time was a junior minister at the interior ministry with responsibility for local authorities, also traveled to Tripoli to meet with Senussi.
Both meetings with Senussi were held without the presence of any official French staff – whether diplomatic representatives, security agents, or translators – but in the sole presence of the late Franco-Lebanese intermediary Ziad Takieddine, who was closely involved in the dealings between the Sarkozy camp and the Gaddafi regime.
According to the magistrates’ ruling last year in the first instance, the judicial probe had established that between January and November 2006, the Gaddafi regime sent 6.5 million euros for Sarkozy’s campaign via bank accounts belonging to Takieddine and another middleman, Alexandre Djouhri.
Following Sarkozy’s election victory, Guéant, as secretary general of the Élysée Palace, made four trips to Libya between 2008 and 2010. Last week, Sarkozy told the appeal court that he was not involved in the visits. “I don’t remember the reasons,” he said of Guéant’s trips, “I didn’t ask for them. The role of the secretary general is not to multiply trips abroad.”
In his statement given to the court on Tuesday, Guéant countered: “Nicolas Sarkozy was necessarily aware because during these short journeys I was absent from the office […] Of course, these journeys are made upon the request of the president.”
Guéant added in his statement: “During the period from 2007 to 2009, it befell me to inform the president of the insistence of the Libyans [editor’s note, about overturning the warrant for Senussi’s arrest] and our incapacity to respond favorably.” Regarding his meeting with Senussi in 2005 in Takieddine’s presence, Guéant emphasized: “I have always said that I had no recollection of talking to Nicolas Sarkozy about my meeting with Senussi. The only thing about which I am certain is that I did not give him an account of it immediately.”
Bouchez El Ghozi turned to Sarkozy: “So it’s possible that he informed you afterward?” Sarkozy angrily replied: “We’re talking of serious things here. I’m not going to be told, six months later, that ‘oh, incidentally, I’ve seen Senussi along with Takieddine.’”
All throughout my collaboration with Nicolas Sarkozy, I have never been guided by personal interest […] I have never done anything else but serve to the best of my ability the minister, then the president.
The judicial investigation established that a series of discussions about helping with Senussi’s case were held between the autumn of 2005 and May 2009 – when Guéant held a meeting on the subject with Takieddine, at the Élysée Palace. In notes found in his archives, Takieddine wrote up a summary of the meeting in which he referred to work on the issue carried out by high-flying lawyer Thierry Herzog, who was also a lawyer for Nicolas Sarkozy, and who the former president described to the judicial probe as his “best friend”.
In what appeared to be a reaction to Sarkozy’s previous thinly veiled attacks over his probity, Guéant wrote: “All throughout my collaboration with Nicolas Sarkozy, I have never been guided by personal interest […] I have never done anything else but serve to the best of my ability the minister, then the president, to follow his orders and oversee the application of his policies.”
Bouchez El Ghozi tackled Sarkozy over his disparaging remarks about Guéant, including his lifestyle which the former president described as “strange”.
“What is the new element that allows you to say that whereas in the first instance you declared that Claude Guéant was an ‘honest man’?” he asked Sarkozy, who replied at length: “Claude Guéant had the reputation of being a Jansenist, working all the time, who you’d never see in any partying. That is the Claude Guéant who I knew during ten years. It’s not even that he was honest – he was rigid. He kept the house in order, as the phrase goes, at the interior ministry and at the Élysée. But I was stupefied when I learned of a certain number of things, which are not linked to the financing of my [2007 election] campaign.”
Sarkozy appealed to the court: “Don’t see it on my part as putting the blame on whoever. That’s not my character. It’s difficult to say that for me because it means that I was wrong. [Occupying] power brings such pressure. Some have cracked. It costs me at a human level.”
Referring to his conviction last September, he declared: “Criminal conspiracy, that’s too much for me, there are limits.” A little later, he referred to his three weeks in jail at the start of his sentence, in late October and early November, before his move to appeal led to him being freed. “Do you believe that when I entered the Santé prison, I had only grand feelings towards my friends who had met with Senussi?”
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