Of the 10 defendants in the appeal trial over alleged Libyan funding for his victorious 2007 presidential campaign, Sarkozy has spent the most time in the dock.<\/p>\n
His lawyers are due to deliver their closing arguments on Wednesday, bringing his defence to a close after more than two months of hearings before the Paris Court of Appeal.<\/p>\n
The 71-year-old former president has repeated insistently and at length, the same message: \u201cnot a single cent\u201d of Libyan money was used in his 2007 campaign, he never sought such financing, and he made no promises to Libya\u2019s late dictator Muammar Gaddafi.<\/p>\n
In particular, Sarkozy denies any undertaking to intervene on behalf of Abdallah Senoussi, Gaddafi’s brother-in-law and former intelligence chief, who was sentenced to life imprisonment in France over the 1989 bombing of a UTA DC-10 airliner<\/a> over Niger. The attack killed 170 people, including 54 French nationals.<\/p>\n More than Sarkozy\u2019s liberty is at stake. When Court of Appeal president Olivier G\u00e9ron reads out the judgment on 30 November, the decision will weigh heavily on the place Sarkozy occupies in French political history \u2013 even if a further appeal to the Court of Cassation<\/a> remains possible.<\/p>\n An acquittal would allow him to denounce what he has repeatedly portrayed as a historic injustice. During the long legal saga, Sarkozy has likened himself to figures such as Alfred Dreyfus and Edmond Dant\u00e8s, Alexandre Dumas\u2019s fictional prisoner in The Count of Monte Cristo<\/a>.<\/p>\n A conviction, however, would place a lasting stain on a presidency already tainted by several legal cases.<\/p>\n Sarkozy prison memoir a bid to \u2018control the story\u2019 and protect image for political future<\/a><\/p>\n Changing support<\/p>\n In September 2025, Sarkozy was sentenced to five years in prison for criminal conspiracy and spent 20 days in Paris\u2019s\u00a0La Sant\u00e9 prison<\/a> \u2013 the first former president of the Republic to be jailed.<\/p>\n This time, prosecutors are seeking seven years for criminal conspiracy, corruption, illegal campaign financing and concealment of embezzled Libyan public funds. They have cast Sarkozy as the \u201cinstigator\u201d of a corruption pact that, they said, damaged the Republic at the highest level.<\/p>\n Sarkozy\u2019s tone has avoided openly attacking the courts, but his line has not changed: no pact, no Libyan money, no favour promised to Gaddafi.<\/p>\n What has changed is the support around him. In the first trial, Sarkozy could rely on a united defence with Brice Hortefeux and Claude Gu\u00e9ant, his former right-hand man. This time, Gu\u00e9ant \u2013 absent for health reasons \u2013 has sent two letters to the court that stop short of incriminating Sarkozy but clearly weaken his position.<\/p>\n Known as \u201cthe Cardinal\u201d for his influence over Sarkozy\u2019s rise to power<\/a>, Gu\u00e9ant pushed back after hearing that his former boss had questioned his integrity in the witness box. He now says he did tell Sarkozy about his secret one on one meeting with Senoussi in October 2005 \u2013 an encounter prosecutors see as central to the alleged pact.<\/p>\n Gu\u00e9ant also recalls a 2007 dinner in Tripoli at which Sarkozy allegedly summoned him after Gaddafi raised Senoussi\u2019s case, telling him: \u201cClaude, sort this out.\u201d<\/p>\n Sarkozy denies this scene took place, but the phrase has become one of the trial\u2019s signature lines.<\/p>\n France’s ex-president Sarkozy on trial over alleged Kadhafi pact<\/a><\/p>\n ‘Thuggish defence’<\/p>\n After years of categorical denials, Sarkozy now accepts that his friend and lawyer Thierry Herzog may have travelled to Libya in late 2006 for a meeting about Senoussi\u2019s legal situation, while insisting he did not initiate it.<\/p>\n He has also admitted he was wrong to say he had never been told of Gu\u00e9ant\u2019s trips to Libya between 2008 and 2010, although he describes them as routine missions for an \u00c9lys\u00e9e secretary-general.<\/p>\n For the families of the UTA DC-10 victims, those explanations have not been convincing<\/a>. Their lawyers condemned what they called a \u201cthuggish defence\u201d and pointed to Sarkozy\u2019s convictions in the wiretapping and Bygmalion cases.<\/p>\n