It is arguably the bitterest irony in modern French political history.
Nicolas Sarkozy, the president who led Europe’s charge to topple Muammar Gaddafi, has been convicted of conspiring to accept tens of millions of euros from the late Libyan dictator.
Now, with a Paris court sentencing him to five years in jail for criminal conspiracy, though acquitting him on the more explosive counts of corruption and illegal campaign financing, the drama of Sarkozy’s rise and fall has entered its most damning chapter.
The verdict, delivered on Thursday, is without precedent in the Fifth Republic. No French head of state has ever before been convicted of criminal conspiracy linked to foreign influence. No modern French president has spent time in prison. The last was Philippe Petain, the head of France’s Nazi collaborationist Vichy regime.
For Sarkozy, it is no doubt the final nail in a reputation already punctured by convictions for influence-peddling and illegal wire-tapping. For France, it raises uncomfortable questions about the nature of power, diplomacy, and the Faustian pacts struck in the corridors of the Élysée.
The Sarkozy-Gaddafi saga began in almost theatrical circumstances.
In December 2007, only months after his presidential triumph for a five-year term, Sarkozy welcomed the Libyan strongman to Paris on a full state visit. Gaddafi, always keen to cultivate eccentricity, pitched his Bedouin tent on the manicured lawns of the Hôtel de Marigny, a stone’s throw from the Élysée Palace, his female bodyguards keeping a careful watch.
On a 2007 visit to Paris, Gaddafi had a Bedouin tent pitched on the lawns of the Hôtel de Marigny – STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN/AFP via Getty Images
To the horror of many in France and beyond, the dictator accused of suppressing dissent and sponsoring terror attacks, including the 1988 Lockerbie bombings in Scotland and UTA Flight 772 in 1989 over Niger that killed hundreds, was treated as an honoured guest.
Sarkozy justified the red-carpet treatment as an act of “engagement”, a way of drawing Libya back into the international fold.
It followed hard on the heels of another high-profile gesture: his then-wife, Cécilia, had flown to Tripoli only months earlier to negotiate the release of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor condemned to death on trumped-up charges of infecting Libyan children with HIV. That mission, hailed at the time as a humanitarian breakthrough, gave the new president instant diplomatic laurels.
Yet critics later argued it also opened the door to a cosy, transactional relationship with Gaddafi, one that soon deepened through defence contracts and, prosecutors would allege, illicit campaign financing.
What the public did not know was that prosecutors would later allege that Sarkozy’s successful presidential campaign had been bankrolled in part by Gaddafi’s regime. According to testimony from intermediaries and intelligence memos first reported by Mediapart, the investigative website, as much as €50m in illicit cash was funnelled into Sarkozy’s coffers.
Little wonder, then, that after the verdict, his wife, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, pulled the foam windscreen off Mediapart’s microphone and dropped it on the floor.
According to the prosecutors, Sarkozy’s aides promised to drop a French warrant against Gaddafi’s brother-in-law, Abdullah al-Senussi, who was convicted in his absence by a Paris court of orchestrating the UTA bombing, in which 170 people died.
Sarkozy has always denied the charges, dismissing the documents as forgeries and the witnesses as fantasists.
The case was haunted by mysterious turns: the death of Shukri Ghanem, Libya’s former oil minister, a key witness, whose body was found in the Danube in 2012 after he drowned of “natural causes”.
Then there was the passing this week of Ziad Takieddine, the Franco-Lebanese businessman who claimed to have delivered “suitcases of cash” stuffed with millions of euros to Sarkozy’s circle, only to change his tune at least twice.
Mr Sarkozy and Carla Bruni-Sarkozy at a Paris courthouse after the former French president was found guilty of criminal conspiracy – Lafargue Raphael/ABACA/Shutterstock
Mrs Bruni-Sarkozy now faces a separate trial for seeking to get Takieddine, an uncle of Amal Clooney, the British lawyer married to George Clooney, to retract in another case destined to cause her clan yet more ignominy.
The court’s decision to convict Sarkozy of criminal conspiracy while clearing him of the other charges reflects the ambiguity of the evidence. Judges accepted that Sarkozy engaged in a covert pact with Libyan actors, one that crossed the line into criminality. But they stopped short of finding that he directly pocketed cash or deliberately flouted campaign laws.
For prosecutors, it is nonetheless a major victory, particularly given the bombshell prison term.
Indeed, Nathalie Gavarino, the presiding judge, was unequivocal when pronouncing a guilty verdict for criminal conspiracy. “You exploited your ministerial position to prepare high-level corruption,” she read. Such acts were “exceptionally grave and likely to undermine citizens’ faith in the institutions of the Republic”.
The conspiracy count recognises that Sarkozy was at the centre of a clandestine network of influence, blurring statecraft with self-interest.
If he had merely courted Gaddafi, the story would have been scandal enough. But history added a bitter twist.
By 2011, the Arab Spring had engulfed North Africa, and Libya teetered on the brink of civil war. Sarkozy was among the first Western leaders to demand intervention. French jets spearheaded the Nato bombing campaign, ostensibly to protect civilians from Gaddafi’s wrath. For many, it was Sarkozy’s attempt to recast himself as a champion of liberty.
Gaddafi pictured in May 2011, a few months before his death – EPA
The campaign culminated in Gaddafi’s downfall and grisly death in Sirte. Rebels captured him. Grainy footage showed his bloodied body in the dust. Nato denied direct involvement, but reports circulated that French agents had provided the intelligence that sealed his fate.
Thus, the man now convicted of conspiring in a plot to take Gaddafi’s millions became the man who, more than any other Western leader, hastened his destruction. It is a contradiction almost Shakespearean in scale: beneficiary turned betrayer, patron turned executioner.
For the families of the 170 victims of the UTA bombing, who confronted the court with their grief, the moral dimensions cut deepest. “What did they do with our dead?” one daughter asked bitterly. Danièle Klein, who lost her brother on the flight, called Sarkozy’s alleged dealings with Gaddafi “an unworthiness without name”.
The wreckage of UTA Flight 772, which was downed in a terror attack that claimed the lives of 170 people – AFP via Getty Images
Sarkozy looked at his shoes as the court was asked whether it was morally acceptable for a democratic government to engage with a regime accused of sponsoring terrorism in ways that might trade or diminish the memory of its victims.
Politically, Sarkozy once dreamed of returning to the Élysée. Few believed he would attempt a comeback, but he has remained influential in French politics, even receiving a call from Sebastien Lecornu, Emmanuel Macron’s new prime minister, a few days ago.
His enduring image as the godfather of the French Right is unlikely to survive this latest blow, however.
Laurent Wauquiez, parliamentary leader of the Republicans, the party Sarkozy once championed, offered his personal “support” and “friendship”, but others remained tight-lipped.
“They have turned the page. Given how the convictions are piling up, they would do well to do so,” said Yael Goosz, a political analyst.
The sentence will make uncomfortable reading for another front-line French politician, the National Rally’s Marine Le Pen, who is appealing a five-year ban from running for elected office after a recent embezzlement conviction over fake EU jobs.
In a mealy-mouthed response, the presidential hopeful said that the “provisional enforcement” of sentences by certain courts “represents a great danger, in view of the fundamental principles of our law, foremost among which is the presumption of innocence”. In other words, politicians should not be provisionally banned or imprisoned until all their appeals have been exhausted.
For France, the case is not just about one man. It is about how the Republic conducts itself on the world stage. Sarkozy’s downfall underscores the risks of personalised diplomacy, the temptation to blur the line between realpolitik and personal ambition.
It also sharpens the debate over the Libyan intervention itself. If the architect of that war was himself compromised by ties to Gaddafi, what does that say about the purity of France’s motives? Was it humanitarian zeal, or the ruthless logic of a man seeking to erase a benefactor turned liability?
As Le Monde put it dryly: “The bombings did not help the recovery of the regime’s archives.”
It will also likely spark fresh questions over the wisdom of Britain’s engagement in the Libya operation during David Cameron’s prime ministerial term.
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