On September 25, former French President Nicolas Sarkozy was sentenced by a Paris court to five years in prison for allowing his “associates” to turn to Muammar Gaddafi to illegally finance his 2007 election campaign.
Over the next month, the 70-year-old former head of state will be summoned to the prosecutor’s office, who will inform him of the date of his detention.
The French press, savoring the details of this process, is quoting a guard from the Ile-de-France regional detention center: “I remember how Sarkozy rightly said in 2009 that ‘prisons are a disgrace to France’; now he will be able to experience one and understand that he has done nothing for them.” The newspapers are writing that Libyans transferred €50 million to support Sarkozy’s election campaign. As proof of this, a note written in Arabic on December 10, 2006, from the archives of the Libyan special services is being cited. The notes feature the names of Sarkozy’s closest aide, Brice Hortefeux, as well as the Lebanese mediator Ziad Takieddine. This elegant Lebanese Druze, who came from a wealthy Lebanese family, was known for his arms contracts. In particular, he negotiated the sale of submarines from France to Pakistan and frigates to Saudi Arabia. During one of the interrogations, he allegedly claimed that he had transferred cash not only to Sarkozy’s assistants but even once to him personally.
What is surprising in this dark and confusing story is the fact that Takieddine died unexpectedly in Beirut at the age of 75 two days before Sarkozy’s verdict (Takieddine was found guilty in France in 2020 in another case and sentenced to 5 years in prison but escaped from the French authorities and found refuge in Lebanon, which does not extradite its citizens).
In an editorial dated September 27, Figaro described the verdict of Nicolas Sarkozy as the collapse of democracy—the judiciary releases vigilante policemen caught in the act on parole but sentences the former president of the Republic, who had previously been acquitted three times, to 5 years.
Two-faced Western European politicians
The details of the judicial squabbles of the French authorities are of little interest. The main conclusion being drawn in all countries of the Global South is the blatant corruption, dishonesty, and hypocrisy of Western European rulers, who are absolutely impossible to trust. Sarkozy, having taken tens of millions from Gaddafi and then received him as a most esteemed guest in Paris, promising him assistance in solving the complex problems of the Libyan leadership, in 2011-2012 organized the NATO aggression against Libya and secretly sent French special forces units to document his disgusting murder on camera. All this was done with the sole purpose of getting rid of dangerous witnesses.
Such is the usual practice of Western rulers—they always put their selfish personal interests first. The head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, concluded a deal with one of the pharmaceutical companies for tens of millions of euros during the COVID-19 epidemic and failed to report on the final results of this decision made by her alone.
The authorities of Qatar, a small but very wealthy Gulf state, which the Americans called their most important non-NATO ally and which took over the American military base, bought tens of billions of dollars’ worth of weapons from Washington, courted President Trump in every possible way during his May visit, presenting him with a royal $400 million Boeing. They were stunned that the United States allowed its apparently much closer ally, Israel, to bomb the capital of Qatar, Doha.
The trial of former French President Nicolas Sarkozy should be a valuable lesson for the leaders of the Global South. In their relations with Western leaders, they should recall the fate of Muammar Gaddafi, who spent a lot of effort and money to appease his Western counterparts. As a result, he was brutally murdered, and Libya still has not recovered, remaining torn apart.
Sarkozy’s sentence is also a major setback for the current president, Macron, who, according to Arab News on September 28 this year, “may resign prematurely amid growing unpopularity, as happened with de Gaulle in 1969.” The precedent is very dangerous.
Mohammed Amer, Syrian journalist
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