Gazeta Lodz - France's Sarkozy says 'innocent' at trial over Libya funding

A lower court in September found the right-wing politician, who was president from 2007 to 2012, guilty of seeking to acquire funding from Muammar Gaddafi's Libya for the campaign that saw him elected and sentenced him to five years behind bars.

The case saw Sarkozy, who has always denied any wrongdoing, become modern France's first president to have gone to jail. He served 20 days before he was released pending the appeal.

In the initial trial, prosecutors had argued Sarkozy's aides, acting in his name, struck a deal with Gaddafi, promising in return to help restore the Libyan leader's international image after Tripoli was blamed for two airplane bombings.

The West laid the blame on Libya for the bombing of the Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988 over Lockerbie in Scotland -- which killed 259 people -- and of the UTA Flight 772 over Niger the following year, which took the lives of 170 people.

Relatives of those killed in the 1989 spoke of their ordeal at the appeal trial last week.

"You can only respond to such indescribable suffering with truth," Sarkozy said on the first of several days of taking the stand, with his wife, model and singer Carla Bruni, in the courtroom.

"But you cannot repair suffering with an injustice: I am innocent," he said.

The lower court found Sarkozy guilty of criminal conspiracy over what it said was a scheme to acquire Libyan funding, but not of receiving or using the funds for the campaign.

The appeal trial is set to run until June 3, with a verdict expected in the fall. If convicted, Sarkozy faces up to 10 years in prison.

Sarkozy has faced a series of legal issues since leaving office and has already received two definitive convictions in other cases.

Q.Szulc--GL