Paris (AFP)
"The suspicion file, against all odds": on the last day of the trial in Paris of former President Nicolas Sarkozy, the defense of his co-defendants, his lawyer Thierry Herzog and former magistrate Gilbert Azibert, pleaded for release Thursday .
For seven hours, the lawyers of the two men pulled the thread outlined the day before by the council of the former head of state, criticizing the "fantasies" and "hypotheses" of the prosecution in this file of corruption and trafficking influence.
Invited to say a few words before the adjournment of the hearing, Nicolas Sarkozy spoke of a "way of the cross", repeating having "told the truth".
"I still have confidence in the justice of our country", he added, before the court puts its decision under advisement on March 1, 2021.
The National Financial Prosecutor's Office (PNF) requested against him four years in prison, including two closed, asking for the same sentence for Gilbert Azibert and Thierry Herzog with, for the latter, five years of professional ban.
That is to say "a social death penalty for Gilbert Azibert, a professional death penalty for Thierry Herzog and a political death penalty for Nicolas Sarkozy", estimated Me Dominique Allegrini.
- "trial of intentions" -
According to the prosecution, this 73-year-old former magistrate transmitted, in 2014, confidential information to Me Herzog, about an appeal by Nicolas Sarkozy in the Bettencourt case, then under examination at the Court of Cassation .
The one who was at the time Advocate General in another chamber of the highest judicial jurisdiction also, according to financial prosecutors, tried to influence the decision, in exchange for support from the former president for a post in Monaco.
The magistrates "all" declared that Mr. Azibert had not requested them, underlined Me Allegrini, ridiculing the hypothesis of the "Azibert virus" which would have "contaminated" his colleagues.
And there is no "counterpart" because "he did not run for the Council of State in Monaco", he added.
Describing an instruction that gave birth to a "legal Frankenstein", he mocked a "windy accusation" against which the defense finds itself in the role of "Don Quixote".
A file "made of approximations, suspicions, hypotheses and trials of intentions", "full of fantasies but empty of evidence," said Mr. Paul-Albert Iweins, one of Thierry Herzog's lawyers.
At the heart of the case are conversations between Me Herzog, historical lawyer of Nicolas Sarkozy, and his client, intercepted on an unofficial line opened in the name of "Paul Bismuth".
A secret line that does not, however, presume an offense, said Me Iweins, insisting on the risk of "wiretapping" for a former tenant of the Elysee.
In the absence of a "corruption pact" between the three men, "there are two parallel friendship approaches but without the slightest causal link between them".
- "sidereal void" -
And for lack of proof, "the prosecution invites us to seek out what is in the minds of the defendants, their secret intentions. It is a dangerous conception, inspired by a feeling of omnipotence," he said .
"This file is the file of suspicion, upheld against all odds."
A "suspicion" which led, from the start, justice to conduct "lamentable wiretaps, which should not be on your desk", launched Hervé Témime, another lawyer of Me Herzog, in the direction of the president of the 32nd correctional chamber.
"Illegal", they must be ruled out in the name of the secrecy of exchanges between a lawyer and his client, "base of the defense", he pleaded at length.
"Where is the evidence ?"
he finally thundered, pointing to the "sidereal void" of the file.
"There are only exculpatory elements, apart from the content of telephone tapping whose interpretation is too fragile, too random".
"If you simply wield, of course, the rules of law of good justice, which are your daily tools, you will relax without any hesitation. And that will be fair," he concluded.
© 2020 AFP