The arguments came as a devastating blow to Nicolas Sarkozy’s defense. Vincent Ollivier and Laure Heinich, lawyers representing 17 families of victims of the 1989 UTA Flight 772 bombing, delivered a scathing critique of the former president on Tuesday, May 5, during the first day of plaintiffs’ closing arguments at the appeal trial in the case of alleged Libyan funding of Sarkozy’s 2007 presidential election campaign. Ollivier was as merciless as he was brilliant, channeling the rage he had long held in check, after two exhausting months of debate, into a damning review of the case.
“There are two meanings of corruption: that of legal scholars and that of moralists,” the lawyer began. “The slow process of degradation of substance or values; a rot.” The victims’ families wanted to know if “the rot really existed, or if it was a media invention.” They hoped they were wrong, he said, “they wished that Nicolas Sarkozy had not conspired to tarnish the memory of their loved ones.”
The families had a “somewhat crazy, somewhat naïve hope” that Sarkozy’s wall of silence would crack. Yet a pair of statements submitted by Claude Guéant, Sarkozy’s former closest aide, only served as a “warning shot for Nicolas Sarkozy.” Barring this exception, the trial had been nothing more than a “theater of appearances, aimed more at the public opinion, and at reinforcing the image of Nicolas Sarkozy as a commander, than at convincing the court.”
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