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Qaddafi ‘funded Sarkozy’s election campaign’ – claim

Muammar Qaddafi's regime funded French President Nicolas Sarkozy's 2007 election campaign, lawyers for former Libyan prime minister Baghdadi al-Mahmudi said on Thursday, quoting their client.

Qaddafi 'funded Sarkozy's election campaign' - claim
Thierry Ehrman

Muammar Qaddafi, his regime and the officials who worked with him financed Sarkozy’s election campaign in 2007,” lawyer Bechir Essed told reporters in Tunis, where Mahmudi is detained, mentioning the sum of some €50 million ($65 million).

Essed’s claims came after the French Mediapart website published a document on Saturday which it said showed Libya’s financing of Sarkozy’s campaign.

Sarkozy has angrily dismissed Mediapart’s document as a deliberate forgery timed to destabilise his re-election campaign and is taking legal action against the website.

According to Essed, the deal was concluded by former Libyan intelligence chief Mussa Kussa on the instructions of Kadhafi and that “documents proving the transaction exist.”

Another lawyer for Mahmudi, who is facing two demands for extradition to Tripoli, confirmed the claim, adding that his client believes Sarkozy is behind his detention in Tunisia.

“My arrest and my detention in Tunisia were instigated by the French president so that the details of the financing of his 2007 campaign are not revealed,” Mahmudi said, according to his lawyer Mabrouk Kourchid.

A Tunisian court in February cleared Mahmudi of crossing illegally into Tunisia as he fled Libya last year but kept him in prison. 

He remains the subject of two extradition requests from Libya, and Kourchid said he had been admitted to hospital on Wednesday after suffering a haemorrhage.

Mediapart on Saturday posted what it said was a 2006 document signed by Kussa referring to an “agreement in principle to support the 2007 campaign for the candidate for the presidential elections, Nicolas Sarkozy, for a sum equivalent to €50 million.”

Sarkozy, who faces a tough second-round vote on Sunday against Socialist candidate Francois Hollande in his bid to win a second presidential term, dismissed it as a “crude forgery” and said he was taking legal action against Mediapart.

Libya’s National Transitional Council (NTC), successors of Qaddafi’s ousted regime, said the note was thought to be a fake, and Kussa from exile in Doha also dismissed the document.

Essid said Mahmudi was bitter at “the ingratitude of Sarkozy, who in return was the first to send NATO forces to Libya” to aid the rebellion against Qaddafi.

He refused to comment on the Mediapart report, but said the transaction was carried out by Libya’s sovereign wealth fund headed by Bashir Saleh, who is currently in France.

The NTC on Wednesday urged France to extradite Saleh, who it says is the subject of a red notice by Interpol.

French officials have said Saleh was in France under a “diplomatic passport from Niger”, but officials in Niger said he no longer had such a passport.

Saleh has also denied being the recipient of the letter published by Mediapart, according to his French lawyer.

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WAR

French forces tortured and murdered Algerian freedom fighter in 1950s, admits Macron

French forces "tortured and murdered" Algerian freedom fighter Ali Boumendjel during his country's war for independence, President Emmanuel Macron admitted on Tuesday, officially reappraising a death that was covered up as a suicide.

French forces tortured and murdered Algerian freedom fighter in 1950s, admits Macron
Malika, the widow of Ali Boumendjel, pictured in 2001. Photo: Stefan Fferberg/AFP

Macron made the admission “in the name of France” during a meeting with Boumendjel’s grandchildren.

The move comes after Macron in January refused to issue an official apology for abuses committed during the occupation of Algeria – instead, he agreed to form a “truth commission” as recommended by a report commissioned by the government to shed light on France’s colonial past.

Atrocities committed by both sides during the 1954-1962 Algerian war of independence continue to strain relations between the countries.

Boumendjel, a nationalist and lawyer, was arrested during the battle of Algiers by the French army, “placed incommunicado, tortured, and then killed on 23 March 1957,” the Elysee Palace said in a statement.

“Ali Boumendjel did not commit suicide. He was tortured and then killed,” Macron told Boumendjel’s grandchildren, according to the statement.

It is not the first time the real cause of death was acknowledged.

In 2000, the former head of French intelligence in Algiers Paul Aussaresses confessed to ordering Boumendjel’s death and disguising the murder as a suicide, according to the statement.

It added that Macron on Tuesday had also reiterated his desire to give families the opportunity to find out the truth about this chapter of history.

Last month, Boumendjel’s niece Fadela Boumendjel-Chitour denounced what she called the “devastating” lie the French state had told about her uncle.

French historian Benjamin Stora, who wrote the government-commissioned report, has said there is a “never-ending memory war” between the two countries.

The report has been described by the Algerian government as “not objective” and falling “below expectations.”

During his 2017 election campaign, Macron – the first president born after the colonial period – declared that the occupation of Algeria was a “crime against humanity”.

He has since said there was “no question of showing repentance” or of “presenting an apology” for abuses committed in the North African country.

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