PARIS: A French court on Tuesday ordered Nicolas Sarkozy to stand trial for illicit campaign financing, adding to the ex-president’s legal woes as he also prepares to answer charges of exerting pressure on a judge.
Sarkozy, 64, lost his final appeal to France’s highest criminal court, and risks a year in prison and a fine of 3,750 euros ($4,085) if found guilty.
The ruling came the same day as another court ordered a trial for ex-prime minister Edouard Balladur on charges of campaign finance violations in an unrelated case.
Sarkozy is not the country’s first former president to be prosecuted — Jacques Chirac, who died last week, was given a two-year suspended sentence in 2011 for embezzlement and misuse of public funds during his time as mayor of Paris.
Prosecutors say Sarkozy spent nearly 43 million euros ($40 million) on his failed 2012 re-election bid — almost double the legal limit of 22.5 million euros — using fake invoices.
He has said he was unaware of the fraud by executives at the public relations firm Bygmalion, who are among 13 others being pursued in the case.
Sarkozy’s lawyer Emmanuel Piwnica called the appeals court ruling a “disappointment.”
Since losing the election to the Socialist Party’s Francois Hollande and leaving office, Sarkozy has fought a barrage of corruption and campaign financing charges, all of which he rejects.
The former Republican party leader faces another trial on charges of corruption and influence peddling over his alleged attempts to try to get information from a judge about an investigation focused on him.
And he has been charged over accusations he accepted millions of euros from the late Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi toward his first presidential campaign in 2007.
Sarkozy will face a standard criminal court, while Balladur, 90, will be tried by the Court of Justice of the Republic, a tribunal set up to hear cases of ministerial misconduct.
The court has no jurisdiction over heads of state, except in treason cases.
Balladur and former defense minister Francois Leotard, 77, were charged in 2017 with “complicity in misuse of corporate assets” over the sale of submarines to Pakistan when Balladur was prime minister, from 1993 to 1995.
The kickbacks are estimated at some 13 million francs (almost two million euros in today’s money), which are suspected of including a cash donation to Balladur’s 1995 presidential campaign of a little over 10 million francs, prosecutor Francois Molins said in a statement.
Balladur also has to answer to a charge that he concealed the crimes.
The claims came to light during an investigation into a 2002 bombing in Karachi, Pakistan, which targeted a bus transporting French engineers.
Fifteen people were killed, including 11 engineers working on the submarine contract.
The Al-Qaeda terror network was initially suspected of the attack, but the focus later shifted to the arms deal as investigators considered whether the bombing may have been revenge for the non-payment of promised bribes after Chirac pipped Balladur in the vote and canceled the payment of commissions.
Balladur’s lawyers said Tuesday that he was “confident” he would be cleared of any wrongdoing, “given that he never committed any of the acts of which he is accused.”
Six others facing trial in the case include Balladur’s campaign manager Nicolas Bazire; Thierry Gaubert, who worked for Sarkozy, who was budget minister at the time; and a Franco-Lebanese middleman, Ziad Takieddine.
They will go on trial this month in a Paris criminal court.
Other senior French politicians charged with financial misconduct include the former prime ministers Francois Fillon and Alain Juppe.
Fillon crashed out of the running for the presidency in 2017 after being charged with using public funds to pay his wife for a fake job as his assistant.
Juppe, a prime minister under Chirac, was given a suspended jail sentence in 2004 over a party funding scandal.
On Monday, ex-justice minister Jean-Jacques Urvoas was given a suspended month-long sentence for passing on secret details of a tax fraud and corruption investigation to the politician targeted, the rightwing MP Thierry Solere.
French ex-president Sarkozy to face campaign finance trial
French ex-president Sarkozy to face campaign finance trial
- The court definitively rejected Sarkozy's appeal, confirming a criminal court will judge the case
- The date of the trial hasn't been set
’Uncommitted’ organizers will join campus protesters in Michigan over Gaza
Democrats have become increasingly uneasy over the US support for Israel as the death toll and destruction climb in Gaza
WASHINGTON: Organizers behind the “uncommitted” political movement against President Joe Biden’s staunch support for Israel’s war against Hamas will travel to the University of Michigan’s campus on Thursday to join students protesting the war.
Student protests in the US over the war in Gaza have intensified and expanded over the past week after police first arrested students at Columbia, with so-called Gaza solidarity encampments established at colleges, including Yale, and New York University. Police have been called in to several campuses to arrest hundreds of student demonstrators.
Uncommitted organizers will travel to the University of Michigan’s Ann Arbor campus, they told Reuters, bringing together a political movement that’s disrupted Biden events and amassed hundreds of thousands of votes in Democratic primaries and a student movement that’s drawn students and faculty of various backgrounds.
Biden won Michigan by less than a 3 percent margin in 2020.
Democrats have become increasingly uneasy over the US support for Israel as the death toll and destruction climb in Gaza. A growing revolt inside the Democratic base signifies the challenge Biden faces in bringing together the coalition he needs to defeat Republican frontrunner and former President Donald Trump.
“President Biden is choosing to put his hands over his ears and ignore the hundreds of thousands of people who have already come out against the war at the ballot box,” said Abbas Alawieh, a prominent “Uncommitted” organizer, who is going to Ann Arbor with Layla Elabed, another Michigan organizer.
“Signing into law more money for Israel is sending a clear message to uncommitted voters, young voters that he doesn’t care to engage seriously with our demands to end this war,” he said, referring to the $26 billion in new aid Biden recently approved.
Alawieh said the uncommitted movement has not been coordinating with student groups so far. “We have an electoral focus, but we certainly see the demands of student protesters, who are calling for peace,” he said.
On campuses where protests have broken out, students have issued calls for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, an end to US military assistance for Israel, university divestment from arms suppliers and other companies profiting from the war, and amnesty for students and faculty members who have been disciplined or fired for protesting.
Biden told reporters on Monday that he condemned both “antisemitic protests” and “those who don’t understand what’s going on with the Palestinians.” Biden campaign spokeswoman Lauren Hitt has said the president “shares the goal for an end to the violence and a just, lasting peace in the Middle East. He’s working tirelessly to that end.”
Trump called the campus protest situation “a mess” as he walked into his criminal trial in New York.
The uncommitted movement amassed sizable vote totals in Michigan, Minnesota and Hawaii primaries and had won 25 delegates as of the beginning of April. They are preparing to target the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August, where Biden is expected to be nominated.
Polls show Biden and Trump running neck-and-neck ahead of their Nov. 5 election rematch nationally. Biden’s 2020 victory was due to narrow wins in key swing states like Michigan.
US nudges Germany on long-range missiles for Ukraine
- Washington confirmed the day before that it had sent Ukraine a variant of the ATACMS missile with a range of 300 kilometers
- “In terms of Taurus... this is a decision for Germany,” a senior US defense official told journalists
WASHINGTON: The United States hopes decisions by it and allied countries to send long-range missiles to Ukraine may encourage similar action by Germany, which has so far refused to provide its Taurus missiles, a US official said Thursday.
Washington confirmed the day before that it had sent Ukraine a variant of the ATACMS missile with a range of 300 kilometers (190 miles), while France and Britain have respectively supplied SCALP and Storm Shadow missiles, both of which have a range of about 250 kilometers.
“In terms of Taurus... this is a decision for Germany,” a senior US defense official told journalists when asked if the provision of long-range ATACMS could clear the way for Taurus missiles to be sent to Kyiv.
“But certainly the US provision of ATACMS as well as prior decisions by the UK and France to provide long-range cruise missiles, we would certainly hope that this would be a factor,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Kyiv has long pushed for Germany to provide it with Taurus missiles — which can reach targets up to 500 kilometers away — to help its fight against invading Russian forces.
But Berlin has declined to send the missiles, fearing that it would lead to an escalation of the more-than-two-year-old conflict.
Moroccan man guilty of murdering man in UK in revenge for Gaza
- Ahmed Alid killed his 70-year-old victim after approaching him from behind
- After his arrest, he told detectives he had committed the acts because of the conflict in Gaza, and in revenge for Israel killing innocent children
LONDON: A Moroccan man who stabbed to death a passer-by in the street in northeast England in what he later told police was revenge for Israeli action in Gaza was found guilty of murder on Thursday.
Ahmed Alid, 45, who had sought asylum in Britain, killed his 70-year-old victim after approaching him from behind on a road in Hartlepool the early hours of Oct. 15 last year, having previously attacked his housemate with two knives, prosecutors said.
After his arrest, he told detectives he had committed the acts because of the conflict in Gaza, and in revenge for Israel killing innocent children, blaming Britain for creating Israel, Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said.
Alid said if he had had a machine gun, and more weapons, he would have killed more people.
“By his own admission, Ahmed Alid would have killed more people on that day if he had been able to,” Nick Price, Head of the CPS Special Crime and Counter Terrorism Division, said in a statement.
“Whatever his views were on the conflict in Gaza, this was a man who chose to attack two innocent people with a knife, and the consequences were devastating.”
Alid had first used two knives to attack his sleeping housemate, to whom he had become aggressive after learning of his conversion to Christianity, stabbing him six times while shouting “Allahu Akbar,” or “god is greatest,” the CPS said.
The 32-year-old housemate, one of five asylum seekers who shared the property, managed to fight him off and another occupant came to his aid. Alid left the house with one of the knives and walked toward the center of Hartlepool.
He passed Terence Carney on the opposite side of the road before circling back and attacking him from behind, stabbing him six times in the chest, abdomen and back. Carney died shortly after police arrived.
Following his interview with police, he attacked the two female detectives, with one suffering injuries to her shoulder and wrist.
He was found guilty at Teeside Crown Court of murder, attempted murder and two counts of assaulting an emergency worker. He will be sentenced on May 17, when the judge will decide if his actions were related to terrorism.
India dismisses US human rights report as ‘deeply biased’
- Report found “significant” abuses in India’s Manipur state and attacks on minorities, dissenters
- India’s foreign ministry spokesperson says New Delhi does not attach any “value” to the report
NEW DELHI: New Delhi said on Thursday it does not attach any value to a US State Department report critical of human rights in India, and called it deeply biased.
The annual human rights assessment released earlier this week found “significant” abuses in India’s northeastern Manipur state last year and attacks on minorities, journalists and dissenting voices in the rest of the country.
Asked about it, Indian foreign ministry spokesperson Randhir Jasiwal told journalists on Thursday that the report “as per our understanding, is deeply biased and reflects a very poor understanding of India.”
“We attach no value to it and urge you to also do the same,” Jaiswal said.
Responding to a question about the growing protests on US university campuses against Israel’s offensive in Gaza that has killed more than 33,000 people, Jaiswal said that “there has to be the right balance between freedom of expression, sense of responsibility and public safety and order.”
He added that “democracies in particular should display this understanding in regard to other fellow democracies, after all we are all judged by what we do at home and not what we say abroad.”
While India and the US have a tight partnership, and Washington wants New Delhi to be a strategic counterweight to China, the relationship has encountered some minor bumps recently.
In March New Delhi dismissed US concerns over the implementation of a contentious Indian citizenship law, calling them “misplaced” and “unwarranted,” and objected to a US State Department official’s remarks over the arrest of a key opposition leader.
Last year Washington accused Indian agents of being involved in a failed assassination plot against a Sikh separatist leader in the US, and warned New Delhi about it.
India has said it has launched an investigation into Washington’s accusations but there has not been any update about the investigation’s status or findings.
Sweden to send NATO troops to Latvia next year: PM
- The Swedish troop contribution was the first to be announced since the Scandinavian country joined NATO in March
- The battalion would be comprised of around 400 to 500 troops
STOCKHOLM: Sweden will next year contribute a reduced battalion to NATO forces in Latvia to help support the Baltic state following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said Thursday.
The Swedish troop contribution was the first to be announced since the Scandinavian country joined NATO in March.
Kristersson had in January announced that Sweden would likely send a battalion to take part in NATO’s permanent multinational mission in Latvia, dubbed the Enhanced Forward Presence, aimed at boosting defense capacity in the region.
“The government this morning gave Sweden’s armed forces the formal task of planning and preparing for the Swedish contribution of a reduced mechanized battalion to NATO’s forward land forces in Latvia,” Kristersson told reporters during a press conference with his Latvian counterpart Evika Silina.
He said the battalion, which will be in Latvia for six months, would be comprised of around 400 to 500 troops.
“Our aim is a force contribution, including CV 90s armored vehicles and Leopard 2 main battle tanks.”
“We’re planning for the deployment early next year after a parliament decision,” he said.
