Trial of former President Sarkozy sheds light on France’s back-channel talks with Libya’s Qaddafi

Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi welcomes French President Nicolas Sarkozy at the Bab Azizia Palace in Tripoli, Jul. 25, 2007. (AP/File)

• French families of victims of a 1989 plane bombing told the court about their shock and sense of betrayal
• During the trial, Sarkozy has said he has “never ever betrayed” families of victims

PARIS: The monthslong trial of former French President Nicolas Sarkozy over the alleged illegal financing of his 2007 presidential campaign is shedding light on France’s back-channel talks with the government of then-Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi.
Family members of terrorist attacks sponsored by Qaddafi’s regime have told the court they suspect that Sarkozy was willing to sacrifice the memories of their loved ones in order to normalize ties with Libya almost two decades ago.
French prosecutors on Thursday requested a seven-year prison sentence for the 70-year-old former leader. Sarkozy, who was president from 2007 to 2012, has denied all wrongdoing.
The trial, which started in January, is to continue until April 8, with Sarkozy’s lawyers to plead on the last day. The verdict is expected at a later date.
Some key moments in the trial have focused on talks between France and Libya in the 2000s, when Qaddafi was seeking to restore diplomatic ties with the West. Before that, Libya was considered a pariah state for having sponsored attacks.
French families of victims of a 1989 plane bombing told the court about their shock and sense of betrayal as the trial questioned whether promises possibly made to Qaddafi’s government were part of the alleged corruption deal.
The Lockerbie and UTA flight bombings
In 1988, a bomb planted aboard a Pam Am flight exploded while the plane was over the Scottish town of Lockerbie, killing 270 people from 21 countries, including 190 Americans.
The following year, on Sept. 19, 1989, the bombing of UTA flight 772 over Niger killed 170 people, including 54 French nationals on board, after an in-flight explosion caused by a suitcase bomb.
Both French and US investigations have tied both bombings to Libya, whose government had engaged in long-running hostilities with the US and other Western governments.
Now, families of victims are wondering whether French government officials close to Sarkozy promised to forget about the bombings in exchange for business opportunities with the oil-rich nation and possibly, an alleged corruption deal.
“What did they do with our dead?” Nicoletta Diasio, the daughter of a man who died in the bombing, has told the court, saying she wondered if the memories of the victims “could have been used for bartering” in talks between France and Libya.
During the trial, Sarkozy has said he has “never ever betrayed” families of victims. “I have never traded their fate for any compromise, nor pact of realpolitik,” he said.
Libya’s push to restore ties with the West
Libya was long a pariah state for its involvement in the 1980s bombings.
In 2003, it took responsibility for both the 1988 and 1989 plane bombings and agreed to pay billions in compensation to the victims’ families.
Qaddafi also announced he was dismantling his nuclear weapons program, which led to the lifting of international sanctions against the country.
Britain, France and other Western countries sought to restore a relationship with Libya for security, diplomatic and business purposes.
In 2007, Sarkozy welcomed Qaddafi to Paris with honors for a five-day official visit, allowing him to set up a bedouin tent near the Elysee presidential palace. Many French people still remember that gesture, feeling Sarkozy went too far to please a dictator.
Sarkozy said during the trial he would have preferred to “do without” Qaddafi’s visit at the time but it came as a diplomatic gesture after Libya’s release of Bulgarian nurses who were imprisoned and facing death sentences for a crime they said they did not commit.
Bulgarian nurses
On July 24, 2007, under an accord partially brokered by first lady Cecilia Sarkozy and EU officials, Libya released the five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor.
The medics, who had spent over eight years in prison, faced death sentence on charges they deliberately infected hundreds of children with the AIDS virus in the late 1990s — an allegation they denied.
The release of the medics removed the last major obstacle to Libya’s rejoining the international community.
Sarkozy traveled to the capital, Tripoli, for talks with Qaddafi the day after the medics were returned to Bulgaria on a French presidential plane.
In court has spoken of his “pride to have saved those six persons.”
“If you did not discuss with Qaddafi, you’d not get the release of the nurses,” he said.
Libya’s spy chief at heart of questions
Accused of masterminding the attack on UTA Flight 772, Qaddafi’s brother-in-law and intelligence chief Abdullah Al-Senoussi was convicted in absentia to a life sentence by a Paris court in 1999 for the attack.
An international arrest warrant was issued for him and five other suspects.
Financial prosecutors have accused Sarkozy of having promised to lift the arrest warrant targeting Al-Senoussi in exchange for alleged campaign financing.
In 2005, people close to Sarkozy, who was at the time the interior minister, including his chief of staff Claude Guéant and junior minister Brice Hortefeux, traveled to Tripoli, where they met with Al-Senoussi.
Both Guéant and Hortefeux have told the court that it was a “surprise” meeting they were not aware of beforehand.
Al-Senoussi told investigative judges that millions of dollars were provided to support Sarkozy’s campaign. Accused of war crimes, he is now imprisoned in Libya.
Sarkozy has strongly denied that.
Qaddafi’s son accusations
Qaddafi’s son, Seif Al-Islam, told the French news network RFI in January that he was personally involved in giving Sarkozy 5 million dollars in cash.
Seif Al-Islam sent RFI radio a two-page statement on his version of events. It was the first time he talked to the media about the case since 2011.
He said Sarkozy initially “received $2.5 million from Libya to finance his electoral campaign” during the 2007 presidential election, in return for which Sarkozy would “conclude agreements and carry out projects in favor of Libya.”
He said a second payment of $2.5 million in cash was handed over without specifying when it was given.
According to him, Libyan authorities expected that in return, Sarkozy would end a legal case about the 1989 UTA Flight 771 attack — including removing his name from an international warrant notice.
Sarkozy strongly denied those allegations.
“You’ll never find one Libyan euro, one Libyan cent in my campaign,” he said at the opening of the trial in January. “There’s no corruption money because there was no corruption.”
Sarkozy turning his back to Qaddafi
The Libyan civil war started in February 2011, with army units and militiamen loyal to Qaddafi opposing rebels.
Sarkozy was the first Western leader to take a public stance to support the rebellion.
On Feb. 25, 2011, he said the violence by pro-Qaddafi forces was unacceptable and should not go unpunished. “Qaddafi must go,” he said at the time.
On March 10 that year, France was the first country in the world to recognize the National Transitional Council as the legitimate government of Libya.
“That was the Arab Spring,” Sarkozy told the court. “Qaddafi was the only dictator who had sent (military) aircrafts against his people. He had promised rivers of blood, that’s his expression.”
Muammar Qaddafi was killed by opposition fighters in Oct. 2011, ending his four-decade rule of the North African country.