Libyan funding: Sarkozy, animated by a "cold anger", counterattack on television

Nicolas Sarkozy counterattacked Friday by saying his "anger" at being "dragged in the mud", during an interview with

given two days after the surprise withdrawal of charges on an alleged Libyan financing of his 2007 campaign . "I am torn between a cold anger whose depth and force you cannot imagine," and "amazement", said Nicolas Sarkozy.

"It is serious, not just for me (...) but for France, which gives the feeling that its former head of state could be a corrupt, it is an ignominy", he added .

In this case "there is not the shadow of a transfer, not the shadow of a payment", he hammered.

"Is it normal that a former President of the Republic is dragged in the mud?"

In November 2016, while Nicolas Sarkozy was running for the right's inauguration in the presidential election, Ziad Takieddine, sulphurous intermediary and one of the main prosecution witnesses, claimed to have conveyed between November 2006 and early 2007 "a total of five million euros "in suitcases on three trips between Tripoli and Paris.

On Wednesday, he withdrew his accusations, in a video unveiled by BFMTV and Paris Match (owned by the Lagardère group where Nicolas Sarkozy is a member of the supervisory board).

"Is it normal that a former President of the Republic is dragged in the mud as I have been for eight years, on the only statements of an individual who lied?" Asked Nicolas Sarkozy .

However, the national financial prosecutor said Thursday that the charges against Nicolas Sarkozy "are not limited to statements" by Ziad Takieddine and are based "on serious or concordant evidence".

"Not a rotten" 

"This file is riddled with nothing but false", replied Nicolas Sarkozy, indicted on October 12 for "criminal association" in this file, refuting point by point the arguments against him.

"I said to the judges: look for a century (...) you will not find anything", he underlined.

"I am ashamed for my country", added the former president, very reassembled, and who drily launched to Ruth Elkrieff who was interviewing him: "measure your vocabulary and things will be much better".

Immediately after the interview with Ziad Takieddine, Nicolas Sarkozy had asked his lawyer to "file a request for 'dismissed' in examination" by assuring him: "the truth is out".

"I am not a rotten, and what is inflicted on me is a scandal which will end in the annals", affirmed Friday Nicolas Sarkozy, who will be judged from November 23 in another case, that of the "tapping".

"Things I didn't do"

In this case, "I am not optimistic, simply combative, I do not intend to be criticized for things that I did not commit", he assured.

"I love my country" and "all I have done in my life is to be loved by the French", he assured, affirming once again that he did not have the intention to return to politics.

"I have turned the page" and "I am very happy like that", he said, while speculations are still rife on the right on the hypothesis of a return, in the event of a serious crisis in the country.

He finally called for "thinking about the issue of a moratorium" on immigration, which he said must be "in depth" reform.

The right, which had formed a body around its former leader in the latest twists and turns of the Libyan affair, welcomed Friday to see "a combative Nicolas Sarkozy and faithful to himself", in the words of the LR boss of the region Grand Est, Jean Rottner.