French prosecutors will appeal a court decision to acquit former prime minister Dominique de Villepin of plotting to smear French President Nicolas Sarkozy to torpedo his presidential bid, state prosecutor Jean-Claude Marin said yesterday.
“All has not emerged in this case. There is still scope for a part of the truth to emerge ... I have decided to lodge an appeal,” Marin told Europe 1 radio, the day after Villepin was cleared.
Marin said the court’s decision was “surprising.”
Villepin told France 2 television late on Thursday that he could “not for a moment” imagine an appeal, as the court had left “no doubt” of his innocence.
In an early reaction yesterday, he said that Sarkozy “is continuing his vendetta.”
The acquittal was a triumph for Villepin in the five-year legal saga and was seen as bolstering his chances of a political comeback as he sets his sights on the 2012 presidential vote.
It was a slap in the face for Sarkozy who had reportedly vowed to hang those responsible for the scandal by a “butcher’s hook.”
Villepin immediately vowed to return to the political fray, criticizing Sarkozy’s policies for “not giving results” and saying he would challenge the president from within the UMP party that both men belong to.
The complex case centers on a list — later proved to have been fabricated — of account holders at the Clearstream financial clearing house who allegedly took bribes from the sale of French warships to Taiwan.
Sarkozy’s name was on the list and the French leader alleges the scandal was fabricated in 2004 — when he and Villepin were angling to succeed president Jacques Chirac — to tarnish him ahead of his party’s nomination for the 2007 presidential vote.
Villepin was cleared on all four counts in the case dubbed France’s trial of the decade: complicity to slander, to use forgeries, dealing in stolen property and breach of trust.
Three other defendants were convicted: former-aerospace executive Jean-Louis Gergorin who admitted to leaking the fake list to investigators, Imad Lahoud who confessed to adding Sarkozy’s name to the list and accountant Florian Bourges, who obtained data on account holders that were later falsified.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
Polish presidential candidates offered different visions of Poland and its relations with Ukraine in a televised debate ahead of next week’s run-off, which remains on a knife-edge. During a head-to-head debate lasting two hours, centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing pro-European coalition, faced the Eurosceptic historian Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS). The two candidates, who qualified for the second round after coming in the top two places in the first vote on Sunday last week, clashed over Poland’s relations with Ukraine, EU policy and the track records of their
‘A THREAT’: Guyanese President Irfan Ali called on Venezuela to follow international court rulings over the region, whose border Guyana says was ratified back in 1899 Misael Zapara said he would vote in Venezuela’s first elections yesterday for the territory of Essequibo, despite living more than 100km away from the oil-rich Guyana-administered region. Both countries lay claim to Essequibo, which makes up two-thirds of Guyana’s territory and is home to 125,000 of its 800,000 citizens. Guyana has administered the region for decades. The centuries-old dispute has intensified since ExxonMobil discovered massive offshore oil deposits a decade ago, giving Guyana the largest crude oil reserves per capita in the world. Venezuela would elect a governor, eight National Assembly deputies and regional councilors in a newly created constituency for the 160,000
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person
RSS