PARIS: Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy was found guilty of corruption on Monday and handed a three-year prison sentence, in a ruling that deals a major blow to any lingering political ambitions.
The jail sentence includes two years suspended and the remaining year can be served at home with an electronic bracelet, the court ruled, meaning Sarkozy will not end up behind bars over this case.
The judge found the 66-year-old had formed a “corruption pact” with his former lawyer and friend Thierry Herzog in order to convince a judge, Gilbert Azibert, to obtain and share information about a legal investigation.
“The facts for which Nicolas Sarkozy is guilty are particularly serious having been committed by a former president who was the guarantor of the independence of the judiciary,” the judgment read.
Sarkozy, a one-term president from 2007-2012, announced an appeal several hours after the verdict, with his lawyer calling the findings “extremely severe” and “totally unfounded and unjustified.”
The conviction sets a new low-point in the tumultuous political career of the right-winger who remains a dominant political figure in France, admired by fans for his tough talk on crime and immigration.
It is also likely to undermine any attempted comeback to frontline politics — an ambition he has denied, but which has been promoted by many supporters ahead of 2022’s presidential election.
Wearing a dark suit and tie, Sarkozy showed no emotion as the sentence was read out and he left court without commenting to waiting journalists.
“What a senseless witchhunt, my love Nicolas Sarkozy,” his wife, former supermodel and singer Carla Bruni, posted on Instagram, next to a picture of the couple embracing. “The fight goes on, the truth will come out. #injustice.”
Only one other modern French president, Sarkozy’s political mentor Jacques Chirac, has been convicted of corruption.
Chirac, who did not attend proceedings in 2011 due to ill health, received a two-year suspended sentence over the creation of ghost jobs at the Paris city hall to fund his party when he was mayor.
The verdict on Monday was based on extensive wiretaps of private conversations between Sarkozy and his lawyer in 2014 during which they discussed helping a judge, Gilbert Azibert, obtain a desirable job in Monaco.
In return the judge delivered information about a judicial investigation into Sarkozy’s dealings with billionaire L’Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt amid allegations that she had handed over envelopes stuffed with cash for campaign financing.
Sarkozy was eventually cleared over his dealings with Bettencourt and has maintained his innocence throughout.
He told the court during his latest trial he had “never committed the slightest act of corruption.”
While reading out her sentence, judge Christine Mee said Sarkozy had “used his status as a former president... in order to favor a magistrate to serve his personal interests.”
On March 17, the ex-president is scheduled to face a second trial over accusations of fraudulently overspending in his failed 2012 re-election bid.
He has also been charged over allegations he received millions of euros from Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi for his 2007 election campaign.
And in January, prosecutors opened another probe into alleged influence-peddling by Sarkozy over his advisory activities in Russia.
The guilty verdict on Monday is a further blow to Sarkozy’s center-right allies in the Republicans party who are struggling to coalesce around a single candidate ahead of next year’s presidential election.
Polls currently show centrist President Emmanuel Macron edging the election, followed by far-right leader Marine Le Pen.
“The severity of the punishment is absolutely out of proportion,” the head of the Republicans party, Christian Jacob, complained on Twitter.
He took aim at the specialized financial crimes prosecutors’ office which pursued Sarkozy, as well as his closest political ally while in power, former prime minister Francois Fillon.
Fillon, whose 2017 bid for the presidency was torpedoed by corruption charges, was convicted in June last year of creating a fake parliamentary job for his wife.
Political scientist Pascal Perrineau said that Sarkozy had been happy to let speculation about another tilt at the presidency in 2022 take off because it helped rehabilitate his image.
“Now it will be a lot more complicated,” he said.
On social media, some users shared previous comments from the pugnacious son of a Hungarian immigrant known for his tough-on-crime rhetoric.
In 2015, Sarkozy spoke out against arrangements that make it possible to convert short prison sentences into non-custodial punishments, which he will benefit from if he fails with his appeal.
“I want there to be no arrangements for sentences of more than six months,” he said.
French ex-president Sarkozy handed jail term for corruption
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French ex-president Sarkozy handed jail term for corruption
- The jail sentence includes two years suspended and the remaining year can be served at home with an electronic bracelet
- The conviction sets a new low-point in the tumultuous political career of the right-winger who remains a dominant political figure in France
Pro-Palestinian protesters arrested after occupying University of Washington building
- Students demanded that the university sever all ties with Boeing, including returning any Boeing donations and barring the company’s employees from teaching
- The arrests come amid a Trump administration crackdown on international students who took part in pro-Palestinian protests at US colleges and universities
SEATTLE: Police arrested about 30 pro-Palestinian protesters who occupied a University of Washington engineering building and demanded the school break ties with Boeing.
Students from the group Super UW moved into the Interdisciplinary Engineering Building in Seattle on Monday evening and unofficially renamed it after Shaban Al-Dalou, a teenage engineering student who was killed along with his mother after an Israeli airstrike caused an inferno outside of a Gaza hospital.
The students demanded that the university sever all ties with Boeing, including returning any Boeing donations and barring the company’s employees from teaching at or otherwise influencing the school. Boeing has a factory in nearby Renton that makes commercial and military aircraft, according to its website.
“We’re hoping to remove the influence of Boeing and other manufacturing companies from our educational space, period, and we’re hoping to expose the repressive tactics of the university,” Super UW spokesperson Eric Horford told KOMO News.
Another group dressed in black blocked the front of the building with furniture and used dumpsters to block nearby Jefferson Road.
UW police worked with Seattle police to clear the building at around 10:30 p.m., UW spokesperson Victor Balta said in a statement. About 30 people were taken into custody and charged with trespassing, property destruction and disorderly conduct, he said. Their cases will be referred to the King County prosecutors.
Any students identified will be referred to the Student Conduct Office, Balta said.
The arrests come amid a Trump administration crackdown on international students who took part in pro-Palestinian protests at US colleges and universities.
More than 1,000 students at 160 colleges, universities and university systems have had their visas revoked or their legal status terminated since late March, according to an Associated Press review of university statements, correspondence with school officials and court records.
Appeals court to hear cases of 2 university students, one detained, the other recently released
- Immigration court proceedings for Ozturk and Mahdawi are being conducted separately
- The appeals court paused that order last week in order to consider the government’s motion
NEW YORK: A federal appeals court is scheduled to hear arguments Tuesday in the cases of a Turkish Tufts University student who has been detained by immigration authorities for six weeks and a Palestinian student at Columbia University who was recently released from detention.
A three-judge panel of the US 2nd Circurt Court of Appeals, based in New York, is expected to hear motions filed by the US Justice Department regarding Rumeysa Ozturk and Mohsen Mahdawi. The department is appealing decisions made by two federal judges in Vermont. It also wants to consolidate the students’ cases, saying they present similar legal questions.
Immigration court proceedings for Ozturk and Mahdawi are being conducted separately.
A district court judge in Vermont had ordered that Ozturk, a 30-year-old doctoral student, be brought to the state from a Louisiana immigration detention center by May 1 for hearings to determine whether she was illegally detained. Ozturk’s lawyers say her detention violates her constitutional rights, including free speech and due process.
The appeals court paused that order last week in order to consider the government’s motion.
Congress limited federal-court jurisdiction over immigration matters, the Justice Department said. It said an immigration court in Louisiana has jurisdiction over Ozturk’s case.
Immigration officials surrounded Ozturk as she walked along a street in a Boston suburb March 25 and drove her to New Hampshire and Vermont before putting her on a plane to the detention center in Basile, Louisiana.
Ozturk was one of four students who wrote an op-ed in the campus newspaper, The Tufts Daily, last year criticizing the university’s response to student activists demanding that Tufts “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide,” disclose its investments and divest from companies with ties to Israel.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said in March, without providing evidence, that investigations found that Ozturk engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a US-designated terrorist group.
The government is also challenging another judge’s decision to release Mahdawi from detention in Vermont on April 30. Mahdawi led protests at Columbia University against Israel’s war in Gaza. He was arrested by immigration officials during an interview about finalizing his US citizenship.
Mahdawi, 34, has been a legal permanent resident for 10 years. He was in a Vermont state prison since April 14. In his release order, US District Judge Geoffrey Crawford said Mahdawi has raised a “substantial claim that the government arrested him to stifle speech with which it disagrees.”
Mahdawi’s release allows him to travel outside his home state of Vermont and attend graduation next month in New York. He recently completed coursework at Columbia and planned to begin a master’s degree program there in the fall.
PM Carney tells Trump Canada is ‘not for sale’
- Carney, speaking in front of reporters alongside Trump at the White House, said Canada was ‘not for sale, won’t be ever’
WASHINGTON: Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney on Tuesday told his US counterpart Donald Trump that Canada was not for sale and would not become the 51st state of the United States.
Carney, speaking in front of reporters alongside Trump at the White House, said Canada was “not for sale, won’t be ever.”
Ukraine’s Zelensky says Russian artillery fire has not subsided
KYIV: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Saturday that, according to his top commander, Russian artillery fire had not subsided despite the Kremlin’s proclamation of an Easter ceasefire.
“As of now, according to the Commander-in-Chief reports, Russian assault operations continue on several frontline sectors, and Russian artillery fire has not subsided,” Zelensky wrote on the social media platform X.
“Therefore, there is no trust in words coming from Moscow.”
He recalled that Russia had last month rejected a US-proposed full 30-day ceasefire and said that if Moscow agreed to “truly engage in a format of full and unconditional silence, Ukraine will act accordingly — mirroring Russia’s actions.”
“If a complete ceasefire truly takes hold, Ukraine proposes extending it beyond the Easter day of April 20,” Zelensky wrote.
Kyiv calls on foreign troops not to take part in Russia’s May 9 parade
- “The Russian army has committed and continues to commit atrocities in Ukraine,” Kyiv’s foreign ministry said
- “These people are not liberators of Europe, they are occupiers and war criminals“
KYIV: Ukraine warned Tuesday against any foreign troop participation in Russia’s May 9 parade to mark 80 years since the defeat of Nazi Germany, saying it would be “unacceptable” and seen as helping Moscow “whitewash its war crimes.”
A handful of countries have in recent years sent their militaries to take part in Russia’s traditional May 9 parade — a showpiece event that has become the country’s most important public holiday under President Vladimir Putin’s quarter-century in power.
“The Russian army has committed and continues to commit atrocities in Ukraine on a scale that Europe has not seen since World War II,” Kyiv’s foreign ministry said.
“It is this army that will march on Red Square in Moscow on May 9. These people are not liberators of Europe, they are occupiers and war criminals.”
Kyiv said marching with Russian soldiers would be considered as “sharing responsibility” for Moscow’s actions during its three-year Ukraine invasion.
“To march side by side with them is to share responsibility for the blood of murdered Ukrainian children, civilians and military, not to honor the victory over Nazism.”
Ukraine was one of the most devastated countries during World War II, with Kyiv saying it “touched every Ukrainian family.”
The foreign ministry also said that six million Ukrainians fought in the Red Army — with five million Ukrainian civilians killed and three million Ukrainian troops.
Russian leader Vladimir Putin attributed the victory over Nazism in Europe as a feat primarily achieved by the Russian nation.
Central Asian troops have often taken part in the Moscow parade.
The Kremlin has this year not ruled out that North Korean soldiers could take part for the first time, after Pyongyang’s troops helped Moscow oust Ukrainian soldiers from Russia’s Kursk region.
