The former President of the Republic, his lawyer Thierry Herzog and the ex-Magistrat Gilbert Azibert, challenged their guilt, on the eve of the dissemination of listenings that launched the case.
by Pascale Robert-Diard
Nicolas Sarkozy, Thierry Herzog and Gilbert Azibert know it better than anyone: on this Monday, December 5, when they advance in turn, against the three judges of the Paris Court of Appeal, they are less defendants ” presumed innocent “, that a former President of the Republic, a lawyer and an ex-advisor at the Court of Cassation, weighted with a condemnation to three years’ imprisonment, including a firm year, for” corruption “, active or Passive, “trafficking in influence”, “violation of professional secrecy” or concealment of this secret, and depends of scathing judgment.
Their lawyers also know that, who have thought a lot, and influence their defense strategy. The issue of this appeal trial is not the same for each defendant.
For Nicolas Sarkozy, this listening affair is only the emerged tip of the judicial iceberg which threatens it: multiple indicted in the Libyan financing case of its 2007 presidential campaign, conviction in September 2021, In that of exceeding the ceilings of his 2012 campaign, which he called. “You will excuse my vehemence, but when you are innocent, you are indignant,” he warns at the helm, fiercely determined to obtain his release.
“I dispute my guilt with the greatest force. I dispute my pain with the greatest force. Madam president, we will hear the listening, I will explain myself on each. I am a former President of the Republic, I have never corrupted whatever. This corruption case is strange: not a penny paid, no advantage granted, no victim. “Indignant, Nicolas Sarkozy is facing the” colossal means “deployed by the prosecution in This case, “five years of preliminary investigation, seven months of listening”. “You have before you a man whose 3,500 telephone conversations have been listened to. I ask everyone to think about what it represents as a violation of privacy.” Encounted again, he said, by the terms used against him by the prosecutor during the first trial. “He indicated that I had a seasoned offender. An experienced offender! An experienced offender! All because I used a dedicated laptop!”
Sarkozy: “My honor was flouted “
The bottom debates did not start but Nicolas Sarkozy already exhibits, in bulk, all the arguments he intends to plead for his defense. He evokes two recent case law, of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) and the Aix-en-Provence Court of Appeal, who came to strengthen the protection of conversations between a client and his lawyer. He attacks the motivation of the judgment rendered by the court, evoking the “bundle of clues”, retained against him, “while to be condemned, it takes proofs. Where are the proofs?” The voice calms down : “My honor was flouted. I come to convince the court that I did nothing.”
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