Pleading in front of your client is never easy. Imagine the exercise when it comes to defending a former President of the Republic, a lawyer by profession, who stakes not only his honor but his life, the mark he will leave in History, on this issue. Measure the pressure when the former head of state sits less than two meters from the microphone where his four lawyers will follow one another this Wednesday. Add the overheated air of the 1st civil chamber of the old palace, on the Île de la Cité, you will have a glimpse of the last day of the trial on suspicions of Libyan financing of the 2007 presidential campaign.
To take the floor himself, to defend his “innocence” step by step as he did when he was questioned for hours at the hearing still itch the main defendant. He plans to say a few more words at the end of the day. For now, it is up to Christophe Ingrain to first attempt to demolish this “hollow and artificial construction” of the accusation. The file is not empty, however, as some caricatures claim. The lawyer, as an efficient technician and experienced tactician, who was a magistrate at the start of his career, knows this. It is strewn with disturbing clues, encounters that can only be chance, and concordances of dates. And a doubt that can be described as “reasonable”.
