The defense pleadings began Wednesday in the framework of the trial for corruption and influence peddling of the former President of the Republic Nicolas Sarkozy and two other defendants, Thierry Herzog and Gilbert Azibert.

The lawyer for the former head of state demanded the release of her client criticizing "the weaknesses and the vacuum of the accusation".

Nicolas Sarkozy will he go to prison?

This question has become one of the challenges of the "wiretapping" trial on Tuesday, after the national financial prosecutor asked for four years in prison, two of which were against the former head of state.

The requisitions are the same against the other two defendants: the former high magistrate Gilbert Azibert and the lawyer Thierry Herzog, with the latter five years of professional prohibition.

The defense pleadings, which requested the release of Nicolas Sarkozy, took place on Wednesday. 

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"Not a few shocking formulas which will be able to mask the weaknesses and the emptiness of the accusation"

From 3 p.m. and for two hours, the lawyer of the former tenant of the Élysée, Me Jacqueline Laffont, worked to deconstruct the file.

And it is first to the requisition of the national financial prosecutor's office that she responded.

"These are not a few final shock formulas that will be able to mask the weaknesses and the emptiness of the accusation. Severity has never created proof."

For the lawyer, there is not the beginning of the beginning of a proof, no material element, nor testimony to accredit the thesis of a pact of corruption.

She believes that the case is based solely on an interpretation of conversations deemed by her camp as illicit and scandalous.

In the room, many black dresses as well as relatives of the former president, in particular his wife, singer Carla Bruni, present for the first time since the start of the trial. 

Her client seated hands clasped in front of her, Me Jacqueline Laffont finally concluded: "What we expect here before you today at the end of this long legal journey, is simple justice, strong justice, free justice, courageous justice, beyond any form of pressure (...) The one who seeks judicial truth, who pronounces the necessary decision. The one who will release Nicolas Sarkozy. "

The decision will soon be reserved

Describing the "devastating effects of this affair which hits the values ​​of the Republic", the financial magistrates considered that it had "damaged" the judicial institution, the legal profession and the presidential image.

According to them, Nicolas Sarkozy did obtain in 2014, via his lawyer, information covered by secrecy from the high magistrate Gilbert Azibert, about an appeal to the Court of Cassation that the former president had filed in the case Bettencourt.

At the heart of their demonstration: conversations intercepted by justice on an unofficial line, opened by Thierry Herzog under the name of "Paul Bismuth", to discuss with his client, in complete confidentiality, they believed.

This secret line had been discovered by the magistrates within the framework of the investigations into the suspicions of Libyan financing of the presidential campaign of Nicolas Sarkozy in 2007, a file which is worth to him today a quadruple indictment.

Pleadings are scheduled to continue until Thursday evening, then the decision will be reserved.