“I’m not saying that Mr. Guéant is lying”: Nicolas Sarkozy contradicts his former right-hand man on the helm | EUROtoday

This is a vital level. Before the Paris Court of Appeal, Nicolas Sarkozy contradicted, on Wednesday April 29, the model of his former right-hand man Claude Guéant. The ex-president denied having mentioned the authorized destiny of Abdallah Senoussi along with his brother-in-law Muammar Gaddafi in 2007.

“The only time Mr. Gaddafi spoke to me about it was in 2005,” throughout a go to that Nicolas Sarkozy made as Minister of the Interior. The former head of state has already defined that he rejected this request.

In letters dated April 11 and 26 and despatched to the courtroom by his lawyer, Claude Guéant, who can not attend the trial for well being causes, recounted for the primary time an unpublished model of an official dinner, on July 25, 2007, throughout a go to to Tripoli the day after the discharge of the Bulgarian nurses by Libya, negotiated by the French authorities.

Claude Guéant recounts that on the finish of this dinner, the top of state, who had assumed the presidency two months earlier, would have despatched for Muammar Gaddafi to repeat “the concern he had just expressed to him regarding Senoussi.” “Claude, see that,” Nicolas Sarkozy is claimed to have requested.

Coming from a head of state, this request takes “another dimension”, explains Claude Guéant who inquires once more, even when he explains having recognized that it was inconceivable to fulfill the Libyans concerning Senoussi.

“I confirm what Mr. Guéant asserts: neither he nor I have ever wanted to do something for Senoussi” or “have given the Libyans the feeling of wanting to do something for Senoussi,” Nicolas Sarkozy insisted in courtroom.

The former head of state famous that he had publicly taken a place towards any measure of amnesty or pardon by Senoussi throughout the presidential marketing campaign and that the topic had not been raised inside the framework of the negotiations for the discharge of Bulgarian nurses, and even throughout the official go to of Muammar Gaddafi in December 2007 to Paris.

“I am not saying that Mr. Guéant is lying”, “his memory has evolved”, he continued. “For facts that are 19 years old, everyone’s memory can evolve,” he added.

They had each appealed their sentences to respectively 5 and 6 years in jail, discovered responsible of legal affiliation for this “corruption pact” with Gaddafi’s Libya, which they each deny.

Also learnThe gist of Nicolas Sarkozy’s Libyan attraction trial: “It’s up to Mr. Guéant to explain himself”

In this trial, which is able to finish on the finish of May earlier than a choice in November, for Nicolas Sarkozy his honor as a former president and his freedom as a citizen are at stake, he who has already spent 20 days behind bars after his conviction at first occasion to 5 years in jail for legal conspiracy.

He was discovered responsible of letting Claude Guéant, 81, and his good friend Brice Hortefeux talk about hidden political financing with the Libyan authorities, which the three males deny.

In alternate, the Libyans would have demanded diplomatic and financial compensation but additionally an examination of the authorized scenario of the brother-in-law of the dictator Muammar Gaddafi and quantity 2 of the regime, Abdallah Senoussi.

“Blow to morale”

Another topic, a gathering in Libya on the finish of 2005, through which his good friend and former lawyer, Thierry Herzog, and his colleague Francis Szpiner, took half, on the authorized examination of Senoussi’s scenario, in keeping with varied parts collected throughout the investigation.

After claiming to have recognized nothing about it, Nicolas Sarkozy now considers this journey credible, in view of the weather within the file. But he assures that he was not on the origin of it and repeated on the listening to that “no one had informed him of this meeting”. Without mentioning this assembly in Libya, Claude Guéant writes that “Thierry Herzog spoke to the president about the mandate he had received” on this topic.

This episode and the Tripoli dinner, Claude Guéant continues, made “natural, and even unavoidable” the evocation on his a part of his personal occult assembly with Senoussi, a tête-à-tête on October 1, 2005, of which he had beforehand affirmed that he had no reminiscence of getting knowledgeable Nicolas Sarkozy.

The prosecution is satisfied that the “corruption pact” was established throughout this assembly, simply earlier than an official journey by Nicolas Sarkozy, then Minister of the Interior.

At the microphone of France Inter, Claude Guéant’s lawyer, Me Philippe Bouchez El Ghozi, affirmed that Nicolas Sarkozy’s statements about his consumer “do not improve his state of health” and that they’ve brought on him “more than a blow to his morale”.

With AFP