OPINION | Just twenty days. That’s all it took to transform French ‘justice’ from an unwavering arbiter into a dispenser of royal mercy, especially when applied to a former political heavyweight.
Only twenty days were needed to seemingly close the chapter on a case that has been the subject of international debate for years: the case involving former President Nicolas Sarkozy’s alleged conspiracy to obtain illegal funding from the regime of the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. A case that was supposed to be a lesson in judicial independence and fairness.
When Sarkozy was initially sentenced to five years in prison, French mouthpieces proclaimed loudly: ‘Everyone is equal before the law,’ ‘No one is above the law,’ ‘This is true democracy.’ Resonant statements and glittering headlines filled newspapers and television screens, as if France had suddenly discovered the meaning of justice and decided to offer the world a lesson in integrity and transparency.
But it soon became clear that all the noise was just smoke and mirrors. Twenty days in La Santé prison, and Sarkozy is released to be placed under ‘judicial supervision,’ with a ban on communication and travel restrictions, as if these limitations are equivalent to five years of actual imprisonment!
Let’s remember the nature of the charges against Sarkozy. He was not convicted of a minor offense or a simple administrative violation, but of conspiring to obtain illegal funding for his election campaign from Muammar Gaddafi’s regime in Libya in 2007. This is not a small matter; it shakes the very foundations of French democracy and reveals a complex web of corruption and international collusion.
The Sarkozy-Gaddafi affair has been the subject of controversy and investigations for years, revealing dubious relationships between Paris and Tripoli, relationships based on interests and money, far from any ethical or legal considerations. When Gaddafi’s regime fell, documents surfaced suggesting that the former French president had received millions of dollars to finance his election campaign. But it seems that the French judiciary suddenly decided that this serious crime, which Judge Nathalie Gavarino described as of ‘exceptional gravity,’ deserves little more than… what exactly? Certainly not true justice.
