“Jean-Pierre was crazy about theater.” When she speaks, Thursday, January 23, at the trial of suspicions of Libyan financing of Nicolas Sarkozy's 2007 presidential campaign, Danièle Klein begins by paying tribute to her brother, an actor. “He had the grace of artists who love to shake things up, but with panache,” she says, relying on carefully prepared notes. Having left to put on a play in the Congo, Jean-Pierre Klein died on September 19, 1989 in the attack which targeted the DC-10 of the UTA company. The plane exploded over the Ténéré desert in Niger. The 170 people on board, including 54 French people, did not survive.
For Danièle Klein, these victims are “170 innocents” Who “weigh a feather”. Were they put in the balance by Nicolas Sarkozy? This is what the prosecution asserts, for which one of the “counterparties” envisaged for the Libyan millions would have been the “negotiations” around the lifting of the arrest warrant targeting Abdallah Senoussi, former head of Libyan military intelligence. However, this man, brother-in-law of the dictator Muammar Gaddafi, was sentenced in 1999 by France to life imprisonment, in his absence, for his role in organizing the attack on UTA's DC-10. This is the reason why the relatives of the victims have become civil parties in the trial of suspicions of Libyan financing. Eleven of them wanted to speak on Thursday.
Facing the Paris Criminal Court, Danièle Klein remembers the pain felt on December 10, 2007, when Muammar Gaddafi arrived in France, for his first visit since 1973. “I waited a long time on my scooter to let Gaddafi's convoy pass. This memory has no legal value, but what does it hurtshe blurted. This visit was an indignity for me.” It's impossible not to see a nod to the expression used by Nicolas Sarkozy in 2016 when facing journalist David Pujadas, who questioned him about this Libyan financing affair. “What an indignity!” had launched the former President of the Republic.
Today a member of the office of the French Association of Victims of Terrorism (AfVT), of which she is one of the founders, Danièle Klein then reacts to the statements of Brice Hortefeux, also tried in this trial. The former minister affirmed, Wednesday, that his meeting with Abdallah Senoussi in December 2005, during a lightning trip to Libya, was only a “trap” stretched through the Franco-Lebanese intermediary Ziad Takieddine. “Yesterday I heard a state servant say: 'There was no escape, nothing serious happened'explains Danièle Klein. Yes, it's serious. When we fall into a trap, now, we say: 'We get up and we get out'. This story is the slide towards 'all rotten' and the vote of the extremes.”
Other members of Jean-Pierre Klein's family testify. “I do not want to remain silent and remain a silent victim again. And I want to know if other men, French this time, came together to find out if the justice rendered to my father was negotiable,” declares his daughter, Mélanie Hoedts-Klein, aged 4 when her father died. “How could republicans, sons of the Republic, flout its principles?” asks Yohanna Brette, the daughter of a flight attendant killed on board the plane. Having become a ward of the nation, she was one and a half years old when her mother died.
“Today's trial will allow us to measure the extent of Nicolas Sarkozy's betrayal. I am disgusted that his actions could have fueled personal ambitions, if it is true”supports Guillaume Denoix of Saint-Marc, who also lost his father in the attack. Co-founder of AfVT, he details how he found himself negotiating recognition and compensation for the victims of the attack in 2003. The following year, Libya paid a million dollars in compensation per family, but without ever admitting responsibility.
-As for Christophe Raveneau, the son of one of the plane's pilots, he speaks directly to Nicolas Sarkozy. “Imagine yourself in front of an almost empty coffin and this sentence, in front of a box, ‘It’s dad’. Mr. Sarkozy, that day, I was the age your daughter is today”he said, turning to the former President of the Republic. He is authorized to respond to him after a short recess of the hearing. “Mr. Raveneau told me that he was my daughter's age when it happened, it was quite upsetting. The pain is there, it will stay and we can only respect it.”he reacts.
Nicolas Sarkozy finally launches into a long tirade. “Let me just say that four words came to mind. The first is the dignity of testimony”he begins. “The second word is pain, I respect it, I understand it.” Then he continues with “the third word”, the “anger”, “and finally, there is the word doubt, present throughout these hearings”.
“I can say to those who testified: I never betrayed them. I never put their fate in return for any pact or realpolitik.”
Nicolas Sarkozyfacing the Paris Criminal Court
“I ask them to believe more in the word of their former president than in the word of their family’s executioners”insists Nicolas Sarkozy, judged in particular for “passive corruption”, “criminal association” and “illegal financing of an electoral campaign”. “I am not someone who can be bought! That victims have harsh words after what they have experienced, yes! But this is not the trial of the attack”, he gets carried away, in statements that sound like political speeches, while swinging his arms around. “I am not a criminal and I was not associated with these criminals,” insists the former head of state, who faces in this trial, like the majority of the defendants, ten years in prison and a fine of 375,000 euros.
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