Libyan trial: Claude Guéant’s defense hits Nicolas Sarkozy

A volley of green wood to finish: Claude Guéant’s lawyer castigated Tuesday the “cynicism” and the “cruelty” of Nicolas Sarkozy who implicated his former right-hand man in the trial on suspicion of Libyan financing of his 2007 campaign.

Me Philippe Bouchez El Ghozi calls on the Court of Appeal to pronounce on November 30 the acquittal of a man prevented by his health from attending his trial, which ends on Wednesday with the defense arguments of the former president.

But the lawyer also came to shoot his poisoned arrows at the defendant sitting right in front of him, Nicolas Sarkozy, whose line of defense on appeal he concisely summed up: “It’s not me, it’s the others!”.

The break with Claude Guéant has been established since the former head of state questioned the probity of the man who was his “Cardinal”, the driving force behind his accession to supreme power and then general secretary at the Élysée. In response, Claude Guéant sent two writings to the Court of Appeal on April 11 and 26, where without denouncing anything explicitly incriminating, he contradicted Nicolas Sarkozy.

If he is measured by the clinical fury of his lawyer, Nicolas Sarkozy quickly understood how the feeling of betrayal remained intact in Claude Guéant, who went “suddenly from the status of a loyal and remarkable collaborator (…) to that, on appeal, of a thug who would have received Libyan funds for his personal consumption”. With one objective: “to remove the suspicion that funds were requested” to finance his victorious presidential campaign.

Even if it means pushing a man “in the twilight of his life (who) will perhaps soon no longer be there”; a man who had a “good back” and whose absence was “used by Nicolas Sarkozy”, who wanted to “bet on the fact that those who are absent are necessarily always wrong”, argues Me Bouchez El Ghozi.

– “Despair of the accused” –

He pretends to wonder about this new defense which shattered the united front presented at first instance: beyond its “cruelty on a human level for an old man, in a dramatic state of health”, does it bear the mark of “the cynicism of the politician or the despair of the accused”?

The two hypotheses “can be cumulative”, he says, assassin, before mocking a “short-sighted, desperate and hopeless strategy”. “Suicidal,” he said.

So certainly, through the mouth of his lawyer, Claude Guéant continues to deny any corruption pact, any hidden financing in exchange for various considerations, notably an amnesty for the N.2 of the Libyan regime, Abdallah Senoussi, sentenced to life imprisonment in France for having ordered the attack against the UTA DC-10 in 1989.

But yes, Claude Guéant had informed Nicolas Sarkozy a posteriori of his secret tête-à-tête in Tripoli in October 2005 with this dignitary, an “unwelcome” meeting that he “will regret until the end of the little life he has left to live”, according to the lawyer. But “it was no more”, in no case an association of criminals, “he did not make the slightest promise”, affirmed the lawyer, contradicting the accusation.

In the same way, during an official dinner in 2007, “Nicolas Sarkozy asked Claude Guéant to look at the legal situation of Abdallah Senoussi”, in front of Muammar Gaddafi, continues the lawyer. “Cowardice or diplomatic courtesy” of the man who had just become president, the lawyer still pretends to wonder.

In any event, just as he had been informed of the 2005 meeting which the prosecution is convinced was a crucial step in the corruptive pact, Nicolas Sarkozy was informed of the Libyans’ “obsession” with obtaining a pardon or amnesty for Senoussi.

The general prosecutor’s office requested six years in prison against Claude Guéant, and seven against Nicolas Sarkozy, who will also request his release. Just like two former ministers did on Tuesday morning, Brice Hortefeux, Nicolas Sarkozy’s friend, and Éric Woerth, the campaign treasurer.

At first instance, Nicolas Sarkozy was sentenced to five years in prison, the criminal court sending him behind the bars of the Health prison where he spent twenty days, a first for a former President of the Republic. Sentenced to six years, Claude Guéant, on the other hand, escaped incarceration due to his health.