PARIS: Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy will stand trial for influence peddling after the country's highest court rejected his final bid to have the case thrown out, his lawyer said on Wednesday.
Sarkozy is accused of offering to help a judge win promotion in return for leaked information about a separate inquiry. He has consistently denied any wrongdoing.
The case came about after investigators used phone-taps to examine allegations that late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi funded Sarkozy’s successful campaign for the presidency in 2007.
As they eavesdropped on his calls, the investigators began to suspect the former president had offered the judge promotion in return for information on another investigation involving allegations Sarkozy accepted illicit payments from L'Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt for the same campaign.
Sarkozy’s lawyers have previously argued that magistrates investigating the alleged secret Libyan funding exceeded their powers and went on a “fishing expedition” by tapping his conversations between September 2013 and March 2014, breaching lawyer-client privilege.
He was cleared over the Bettencourt allegations.
On Wednesday, his defence team said the use in this case of wiretapped remarks gleaned in relation to a different investigation contravened a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights.
"These legal issues are still relevant," Sarkozy lawyer Jacqueline Laffont said. "It will be for the court to decide whether a French court can override a decision of the European Court of Human Rights."
Wednesday's ruling that the trial proceed came from the 'Cour de Cassation', which decides whether an earlier decision by an appeals court conforms with French law.
France’s Nicolas Sarkozy loses bid to avoid influence peddling trial
France’s Nicolas Sarkozy loses bid to avoid influence peddling trial
- Sarkozy is accused of offering to help a judge win promotion
- Sarkozy’s lawyers have previously argued that magistrates investigating the alleged secret Libyan funding exceeded their powers
DR Congo’s amputees bear scars of years of conflict
- More than 800 people with wounds from weapons, mines or unexploded ordnance have been treated in centers supported by the International Committee of the Red Cross in the eastern DRC this year
GOMA: They survived the bombs and bullets, but many lost an arm or a leg when M23 fighters seized the city of Goma in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo nearly a year ago.
Lying on a rug, David Muhire arduously lifted his thigh as a carer in a white uniform placed weights on it to increase the effort and work the muscles.
The 25-year-old’s leg was amputated at the knee — he’s one of the many whose bodies bear the scars of the Rwanda-backed M23’s violent offensive.
Muhire was grazing his cows in the village of Bwiza in Rutshuru territory, North Kivu province, when an explosive device went off.
He lost his right arm and right leg in the blast, which killed another farmer who was with him.
Fighting had flared at the time in a dramatic escalation of a decade-long conflict in the mineral-rich region that had seen the M23 seize swathes of land.
The anti-government M23 is one of a string of armed groups in the eastern DRC that has been plagued by internal and cross-border violence for three decades, partly traced back to the 1994 Rwanda genocide.
Early this year, clashes between M23 fighters and Congolese armed forces raged after the M23 launched a lightning offensive to capture two key provincial capitals.
The fighting reached outlying areas of Muhire’s village — within a few weeks, both cities of Goma and Bukavu had fallen to the M23 after a campaign which left thousands dead and wounded.
Despite the signing in Washington of a US-brokered peace deal between the leaders of Rwanda and the DRC on December 4, clashes have continued in the region.
Just days after the signing, the M23 group launched a new offensive, targeting the strategic city of Uvira on the border with the DRC’s military ally Burundi.
More than 800 people with wounds from weapons, mines or unexploded ordnance have been treated in centers supported by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in the eastern DRC this year.
More than 400 of them were taken to the Shirika la Umoja center in Goma, which specializes in treating amputees, the ICRC said.
“We will be receiving prosthetics and we hope to resume a normal life soon,” Muhire, who is a patient at the center, told AFP.
- ‘Living with the war’ -
In a next-door room, other victims of the conflict, including children, pedalled bikes or passed around a ball.
Some limped on one foot, while others tried to get used to a new plastic leg.
“An amputation is never easy to accept,” ortho-prosthetist Wivine Mukata said.
The center was set up around 60 years ago by a Belgian Catholic association and has a workshop for producing prostheses, splints and braces.
Feet, hands, metal bars and pins — entire limbs are reconstructed.
Plastic sheets are softened in an oven before being shaped and cooled. But too often the center lacks the materials needed, as well as qualified technicians.
Each new flare-up in fighting sees patients pouring into the center, according to Sylvain Syahana, its administrative official.
“We’ve been living with the war for a long time,” he added.
Some 80 percent of the patients at the center now undergo amputation due to bullet wounds, compared to half around 20 years ago, he said.
“This clearly shows that the longer the war goes on, the more victims there are,” Syahana said.
