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Sarkozy’s Libyan Funding: A “Surprise” Lunch with Gaddafi’s Brother-in-Law Puts Claude Guéant Through the Wringer

Trial – In the trial concerning the Libyan funding of Nicolas Sarkozy’s campaign, Claude Guéant was questioned about his meeting in Libya with Senoussi, Gaddafi’s brother-in-law, who was sentenced to life imprisonment for his role in the UTA DC-10 bombing.

“And at the restaurant, what happened?” “We had a meal together.” On Thursday, the court had to extract explanations phrase by phrase from Claude Guéant, the former chief of staff to Nicolas Sarkozy, regarding his unlikely dinner in Libya with Gaddafi’s brother-in-law. Several court sessions had circled around this issue in the trial over the Libyan financing of Sarkozy’s 2007 presidential campaign. Even the judge had grown impatient: “The court would like to one day set foot in Tripoli.”

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This was soon accomplished. At the stand, Claude Guéant, turning 80 on the following Friday, recounted how he found himself “alone” in Libya to “prepare” for a visit by Nicolas Sarkozy, then the Minister of the Interior, for whom Guéant was the chief of staff at the time. The former president is suspected of having made a “corruption pact” with Muammar Gaddafi, where the wealthy dictator would finance his 2007 presidential campaign with the help of his close associates, Claude Guéant and Brice Hortefeux, who are also on trial.

Face-to-face with a man sentenced to life imprisonment in France

In Tripoli in early October 2005, the intermediary Ziad Takieddine (a co-defendant but on the run) picked up Claude Guéant one evening: “I’m going to introduce you to someone very important in the regime.” It was Abdallah Senoussi, head of Libyan military intelligence, sentenced in absentia in France to life imprisonment for his role in the 1989 UTA DC-10 bombing, which killed 170 people, including 54 French nationals.

“Did you discuss with him the financing of Nicolas Sarkozy’s campaign?” the judge asked the visibly uncomfortable defendant. “No, Madam.” Did they talk about Senoussi’s legal situation? According to the prosecution, one of the returns for campaign funding was the promise of assistance for Senoussi, who hoped to have his international arrest warrant lifted. Guéant admits the topic was probably discussed. “The only answer I could give was: ‘I will look into the matter,'” he says, but he swears he did nothing afterward.

Upon returning to Paris after his Libyan trip, he claims he kept this strange dinner to himself. “I didn’t want to tell my minister that I had been duped.” The financial prosecutor, Quentin Dandoy, doesn’t buy it. “Nothing fits in the description of what happened, nothing is logical,” he dismisses. “Unless the purpose was to discuss something else.”

Two months later in Tripoli, Brice Hortefeux, then the Minister of Territorial Communities, also fell into the same “trap” of an unexpected meeting with Abdallah Senoussi.

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