Overview
- Paris’s appeals court confirmed Monday that Nicolas Sarkozy will be questioned Wednesday about two attestations from Claude Guéant dated April 11 and April 26.
- Guéant, who is absent for health reasons, says Sarkozy pulled him aside at a July 25, 2007 dinner in Tripoli after Muammar Gaddafi raised Abdallah Senoussi’s case and told him, “Claude, see to it.”
- Sarkozy issued what he called his most formal denial and argues Guéant is mixing up 2005 contacts with a 2007 state visit, saying he never gave any instruction on Senoussi.
- Guéant writes that lifting Senoussi’s arrest warrant or granting clemency was impossible and never planned, though he says he left the issue open with Libyan officials to avoid a blunt refusal.
- The letters crack a defense that was united at the first trial, where Sarkozy and Guéant were sentenced to five and six years in prison, and refocus the appeal on the core claim of covert Libyan funding tied to favors over Senoussi.