Questioned about two writings by his former right-hand man Claude Guéant, Nicolas Sarkozy affirmed on Wednesday that he had never discussed the fate of Abdallah Senoussi with Muammar Gaddafi in 2007. The question is central: it is a question of proving that a "corruption pact" would have been concluded between the Sarkozy camp and the Libyan authorities.

Published on: 04/29/2026 - 04:01 Modified on: 04/29/2026 - 21:07

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This is a crucial point. Before the Paris Court of Appeal, Nicolas Sarkozy contradicted, Wednesday April 29, the version of his former right-hand man Claude Guéant. The ex-president denied having discussed the legal fate of Abdallah Senoussi with his brother-in-law Muammar Gaddafi in 2007.

“The only time Mr. Gaddafi spoke to me about it was in 2005,” during a visit that Nicolas Sarkozy made as Minister of the Interior. The former head of state has already explained that he rejected this request.

In letters dated April 11 and 26 and sent to the court by his lawyer, Claude Guéant, who cannot attend the trial for health reasons, recounted for the first time an unpublished version of an official dinner, on July 25, 2007, during a visit to Tripoli the day after the release of the Bulgarian nurses by Libya, negotiated by the French authorities.

Claude Guéant recounts that at the end of this dinner, the head of state, who had assumed the presidency two months earlier, would have sent for Muammar Gaddafi to repeat "the concern he had just expressed to him regarding Senoussi." “Claude, see that,” Nicolas Sarkozy is said to have asked.

Coming from a head of state, this request takes "another dimension", explains Claude Guéant who inquires again, even if he explains having known that it was impossible to satisfy the Libyans regarding Senoussi.

“I confirm what Mr. Guéant asserts: neither he nor I have ever wanted to do something for Senoussi” or “have given the Libyans the feeling of wanting to do something for Senoussi,” Nicolas Sarkozy insisted in court.

The former head of state noted that he had publicly taken a position against any measure of amnesty or pardon of Senoussi during the presidential campaign and that the subject had not been raised within the framework of the negotiations for the release of Bulgarian nurses, or even during the official visit of Muammar Gaddafi in December 2007 to Paris.

“I am not saying that Mr. Guéant is lying”, “his memory has evolved”, he continued. “For facts that are 19 years old, everyone’s memory can evolve,” he added.

They both appealed against their sentences of five and six years in prison respectively, found guilty of criminal association for this "corruption pact" with Gaddafi's Libya, which they both deny.

Also read: The essence of Nicolas Sarkozy's Libyan appeal trial: "It's up to Mr. Guéant to explain himself"

In this trial, which will end at the end of May before a decision in November, for Nicolas Sarkozy his honor as a former president and his freedom as a citizen are at stake, he who has already spent 20 days behind bars after his conviction at first instance to five years in prison for criminal conspiracy.

He was found guilty of letting Claude Guéant, 81, and his friend Brice Hortefeux discuss hidden political financing with the Libyan authorities, which the three men deny.

In exchange, the Libyans would have demanded diplomatic and economic compensation but also an examination of the judicial situation of the brother-in-law of the dictator Muammar Gaddafi and number 2 of the regime, Abdallah Senoussi.

“Blow to morale”

Another subject, a meeting in Libya at the end of 2005, in which his friend and former lawyer, Thierry Herzog, and his colleague Francis Szpiner, took part, on the legal examination of Senoussi's situation, according to various elements collected during the investigation.

After claiming to have known nothing about it, Nicolas Sarkozy now considers this trip credible, in view of the elements in the file. But he assures that he was not at the origin of it and repeated at the hearing that “no one had informed him of this meeting”. Without mentioning this meeting in Libya, Claude Guéant writes that "Thierry Herzog spoke to the president about the mandate he had received" on this subject.

This episode and the Tripoli dinner, Claude Guéant continues, made "natural, and even unavoidable" the evocation on his part of his own occult meeting with Senoussi, a tête-à-tête on October 1, 2005, of which he had previously affirmed that he had no memory of having informed Nicolas Sarkozy.

The prosecution is convinced that the "corruption pact" was established during this meeting, just before an official trip by Nicolas Sarkozy, then Minister of the Interior.

At the microphone of France Inter, Claude Guéant's lawyer, Me Philippe Bouchez El Ghozi, affirmed that Nicolas Sarkozy's statements about his client "do not improve his state of health" and that they have caused him "more than a blow to his morale".

With AFP

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