The Sarkozy Trial and Behind the Scenes of the "Deal" with Gaddafi
Family members of victims of terrorist attacks ordered by the Gaddafi regime told the court they suspected Mr. Sarkozy of being prepared to sacrifice the memory of their loved ones in order to normalize ties with Libya nearly 20 years ago.
French prosecutors on Thursday requested a seven-year prison sentence for the 70-year-old former leader. Mr. Sarkozy, who was president from 2007 to 2012, has denied any wrongdoing. The trial, which began in January, is scheduled to continue until April 8, with Mr. Sarkozy's lawyers expected to present their arguments on the final day. A verdict is expected at a later date.
Some key moments in the trial focused on talks between France and Libya in the 2000s, when Mr. Gaddafi sought to reestablish diplomatic ties with the West. Previously, Libya was considered a pariah state for sponsoring attacks.
The French families of victims of a 1989 bombing told the court of their shock and sense of betrayal as the trial debated whether promises made to Gaddafi's government were part of the alleged bribery deal.
The Lockerbie and UTA attacks
In 1988, a bomb on a Pam Am flight exploded as the plane flew over the Scottish town of Lockerbie , killing 270 people from 21 countries, including 190 Americans. The following year, on September 19, 1989 , the attack on UTA Flight 772 over Niger killed 170 people, including 54 French nationals on board, after an in-flight explosion caused by a suitcase bomb.
French and American investigations linked both attacks to Libya, whose government had been engaged in long-standing hostilities with the United States and other Western governments.
Now, families of the victims are wondering whether French government officials close to Mr. Sarkozy promised to forget the attacks in exchange for business opportunities with the oil-rich country and, possibly, an alleged corruption case.
"What did they do with our dead?" Nicoletta Diasio, the daughter of a man who died in the attack, told the court she wondered if the victims' memories "could have been used as bargaining chips" in negotiations between France and Libya.
During the trial, Mr. Sarkozy said he had "never betrayed" the victims' families. "I never traded their fate for a compromise or a realpolitik pact ," he said.
Libya strives to restore ties with the West
Libya has long been a pariah state due to its involvement in the bombings of the 1980s. In 2003, it accepted responsibility for the 1988 and 1989 bombings and agreed to pay billions of dollars in compensation to the victims' families.
Gaddafi had also announced that he was dismantling his nuclear weapons program , which led to the lifting of international sanctions against the country. Britain , France, and other Western countries have sought to reestablish relations with Libya for security, diplomatic, and commercial purposes.
In 2007, Mr. Sarkozy welcomed Mr. Gaddafi to Paris with honors for a five-day official visit, allowing him to set up a Bedouin tent near the Élysée presidential palace. Many French people still remember this gesture, believing that Mr. Sarkozy had gone too far to please a dictator.
Mr Sarkozy said during the trial that he would have preferred to "do without" Mr Gaddafi's visit at the time, but that it was a diplomatic gesture after Libya released Bulgarian nurses who had been imprisoned and faced the death penalty for a crime they said they did not commit.
Bulgarian nurses
On July 24, 2007, under an agreement partially brokered by First Lady Cecilia Sarkozy and EU officials, Libya released the five Bulgarian nurses and one Palestinian doctor.
The latter, who had spent more than eight years in prison, risked the death penalty for having deliberately infected hundreds of children with the AIDS virus in the late 1990s, something they denied.
The release of the doctors has removed the last major obstacle to Libya's return to the international community.
Mr. Sarkozy traveled to the capital Tripoli to meet with Mr. Gaddafi the day after the doctors returned to Bulgaria aboard a French presidential plane. In court, he spoke of his "pride in having saved these six people . " "If you didn't talk to Gaddafi, you wouldn't get the nurses released ," he said.
Libyan spy chief at the heart of questions
Accused of orchestrating the attack on UTA Flight 772, Abdullah al-Senussi, Gaddafi's brother-in-law and head of the intelligence services, was sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment by a Paris court in 1999 for the attack.
An international arrest warrant has been issued for him and five other suspects. Financial prosecutors have accused Mr. Sarkozy of promising to lift the arrest warrant against Mr. al-Senussi in exchange for alleged campaign funding.
In 2005, close associates of Mr Sarkozy, then Minister of the Interior, including his chief of staff Claude Guéant and his junior minister Brice Hortefeux , went to Tripoli, where they met Mr al-Senoussi.
Both Guéant and Hortefeux told the court that it was a "surprise" meeting , of which they had no prior knowledge. Al-Senoussi told the investigating judges that millions of dollars had been provided to support Sarkozy's campaign. Accused of war crimes , he is now imprisoned in Libya.
Sarkozy firmly denied these accusations.
Accusations of Gaddafi's son
Gaddafi's son, Seif al-Islam, told French news channel RFI in January that he was personally involved in handing over $5 million in cash to Mr. Sarkozy. Seif al-Islam sent RFI radio a two-page statement outlining his version of events. This is the first time he has spoken to the media since 2011.
He said Mr Sarkozy had first "received $2.5 million from Libya to finance his election campaign" in the 2007 presidential election, in return for which Mr Sarkozy had to "conclude agreements and carry out projects in favour of Libya" .
He said a second payment of $2.5 million in cash had been made, without specifying the date. He said the Libyan authorities expected that in return, Mr. Sarkozy would end a legal case concerning the 1989 downing of UTA Flight 771, including by removing his name from an international warrant notice.
Mr. Sarkozy has strongly denied these allegations. "You will never find a Libyan euro, a Libyan cent in my campaign," he said at the opening of the trial in January. "There is no corruption money because there was no corruption."
Sarkozy turns his back on Gaddafi
The Libyan counter-revolution began in February 2011, pitting army units and militias loyal to Gaddafi against rebels. Mr. Sarkozy was the first Western leader to publicly support the rebellion.
On February 25, 2011, he declared that the violence committed by pro-Gaddafi forces was unacceptable and should not go unpunished. "Gaddafi must go ," he declared at the time. On March 10 of that same year, France became the first country in the world to recognize the National Transitional Council as the legitimate government of Libya.
"It was the Arab Spring ," Mr. Sarkozy told the court. "Gaddafi was the only dictator who sent (military) planes against his people. He promised rivers of blood, that's his expression."
Muammar Gaddafi was killed by opposition fighters backed by the Pentagon-CIA-NATO agents in October 2011, ending his four-decade rule over the North African country.
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