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‘I paid Sarkozy $5m to make Lockerbie air disaster disappear’ – Gadaffi’s son

Alameen Templeton

Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the son of murdered Libyan strongman, Muammar, has repeated claims he personally handed over $5million to intermediaries of former French president Nicolas Sarkozy to fund his successful presidential campaign.

Speaking to RFi, Saif al-Islam said he has made the allegations in 2018 to Judge Serge Tournaire who is heading the prosecution of Sarkozy in a French court for corruption.

“Sarkozy,” Saif al-Islam says,  “received $2.5 million from Libya to finance his electoral campaign” during the 2007 presidential election, in return for which Nicolas Sarkozy was to “conclude agreements and carry out projects in favor of Libya.”

Lockerbie air disaster

A second sum of 2.5 million dollars, also in cash, was given to the Sarkozy clan, according to him. Saif al-Islam Gaddafi did not specify when, but said that in return the Libyan authorities expected Nicolas Sarkozy to put an end to the affair of the Lockerbie air disaster that killed 170 people when a UTA DC10 crashed on top of the Scottish town in 1989.

The Libyans also wanted the names of six countrymen to be removed from the Interpol notice, including that of Abdullah Senussi, the head of the Libyan secret services and Gaddafi’s brother-in-law.

Saif al-Islam claims that he himself offered this sum to the former French head of state in exchange for the end of the prosecution… and that he personally supervised the transmission of the money in cash.

He said the suitcases of money were given to Claude Guéant, then Nicolas Sarkozy’s chief of staff. “The money,” he says,  “was passed on to him by Bashir Saleh,” Muammar Gaddafi’s former treasurer and his confidant, who is also a defendant in the case. It was through the intermediary, says Gaddafi’s son, of Alexandre Djouhri, a businessman of Algerian origin.

According to Saif al-Islam, this money was then placed in a bank account in Geneva.

He recounted the notorious scene – originally reported by Bashir Saleh, a co-defendant in the Sarkozy case – which, he said, “made everyone present laugh”:  Claude Guéant, France’s Minister of the Interior, had such difficulty closing a suitcase full of dollars and that he had no option but to climb on top of the bulging bag to do so. Guéant still denies his involvement.

Saif al-Islam claimed that during the meeting held on 6 October 2005 in Tripoli under Gaddafi’s tent, Sarkozy and Gaddafi discussed financial support in the French presidential election. He claimed the support “resulted in the payment of 2.5 million euros”.

Pressure to change testimony

He added: “This is why Nicolas Sarkozy sent his chief of staff, Claude Guéant, to receive the money. Guéant then returned to France with 2.5 million euros in cash.

Saif al-Islam also claimed the former French president has exerted pressure on him repeatedly to change his testimony in court.

The first attempt to persuade him to change his testimony was made in 2021 when he was asked to “deny everything that is said about Libyan support for Sarkozy for the elections”. In return, his case before the International Criminal Court would disappear.

Saif al-Islam is still wanted by the court for his role in countering forces that eventually led to his father’s downfall and disgrace.

Saif al-Islam Gaddafi also claims an Ivorian, Noel Dubus approached Hannibal Gaddafi, his younger brother, who had been imprisoned for several years in Lebanon.

Saif al-Islam says Dubus went to Beirut and assured Hannibal of his release, if Saif al-Islam Gaddafi would change his testimony in favor of Sarkozy. Hannibal, the youngest son of Gaddafi, has been in prison in Beirut since 2015 in connection with the case of the disappearance of Moussa el-Sadr, a senior Lebanese cleric last seen in Libya in August 1978. Lebanon is still demanding information about his disappearance from Tripoli.

Saif al-Islam says he “categorically refused” all these requests.  He provided no proof but several witnesses in the Sarkozy case claim they have been threatened.

‘Opportunistic revenge’

Sarkozy’s lawyer, Christophe Ingrain, said the claims were “not only fanciful, but also very opportunistic.” These statements, Ingrain said, “come as the trial has just begun. They come from someone who, since the beginning of the trial, for ten years, has been putting forward accusations that are not supported by anything, that are not confirmed by anything.” And the lawyer continues: “For ten years he has promised to hand over documents that would confirm these accusations. To date, nothing has been postponed to the proceedings. So for me these accusations are simply fanciful boasting and have no importance.”

Saif al-Islam also claimed Nicolas Sarkozy, then Minister of the Interior, personally contacted Abdallah Senussi, the former Libyan Minister of the Interior, on the occasion of his visit to Libya in 2005 and that he promised him that he would remove his name from the Interpol list as soon as he was elected president.

The son of the “Libyan Guide” assures that recordings of this telephone conversation exist and are still in Senussi’s possession. He specifies that all this was reported in 2018 to Judge Tournaire in charge of the case.

On several occasions, Libyan dignitaries have claimed that recordings and documents exist, but to date, the French justice system has not had access to any of them.

  • Saif al-Islam has repeatedly expressed his desire to run in Libya’s presidential election, but these elections have never taken place since the fall of his father. He was imprisoned in Zentan in November 2011 for his role in the repression of the Libyan people and threats against insurgents. He was released in June 2017 under a general amnesty, but some in Libya are still calling for the death penalty against him. Since then, he has lived in Zentan and moved to southern Libya, where he enjoys the support of the tribes. He is still under an arrest warrant issued by the ICC for war crimes, but Libya does not intend to hand him over. His lawyers consider that the fact that he was tried in his country does not allow the ICC to try him a second time on the same grounds. The prosecutor of this body, Karim Khan, who was his lawyer in the past, continues to demand his extradition.

 

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