Jail time for Sarkozy: Why the unprecedented sentence over Libya financing?

The Debate

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6d ago 44:02

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France's former leader Nicolas Sarkozy has been sentenced to five years in jail for his part in the illegal financing of his 2007 presidential campaign by Muammar Gaddafi's Libya. He'll do prison time, even during his appeal. That's on top of his electronic bracelet he wore in a separate case of eavesdropping on magistrates. "I'm innocent," insists the former conservative leader.

Sarkozy still casts a long shadow over French politics and regularly advises current president Emmanuel Macron despite the four criminal cases against the founder of the Les Républicains party, whose current leader Bruno Retailleau also serves as Macron's interior minister.

Is this verdict a triumph of a judicial branch of government that's independent of political pressures, or overreach as claimed by far-right figurehead Marine Le Pen, who's got legal issues of her own?

We look at the facts and ask about the masterminds and bag men of the Libya corruption trial, one that harks back to a time when Gaddafi was back in the good graces of the international community, before Sarkozy himself led the charge to have the UN intervene and stop Gaddafi from quashing the Arab Spring rebellion out of Benghazi. How does Thursday's verdict sit here and there?

Produced by François Picard, Théophile Vareille, Juliette Laffont, Guillaume Gougeon and Charles Wente.

26 episodes

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