Nicolas Sarkozy will “comply” with the sanction imposed but will refer the matter to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), announced his lawyer, Me Patrice Spinosi.
The Court of Cassation on Wednesday rejected Nicolas Sarkozy’s appeal in the wiretapping affair, making definitive his sentence to one year in prison under an electronic bracelet for corruption and influence peddling, an unprecedented sanction for a former head of the State.
Until now suspended, this sentence, to which is added three years of ineligibility, is now applicable: Nicolas Sarkozy, 69 years old, will be summoned before a sentence enforcement judge who will have to determine the terms of his electronic bracelet . This is the first definitive conviction of the former president (2007-2012).
“Nicolas Sarkozy will obviously comply with the sanction pronounced which is now final”
Me Patrice Spinosi, lawyer for Nicolas Sarkozy at AFP
Nicolas Sarkozy “will conform” to the sanction pronounced but will refer the matter to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), announced his lawyer, Me Patrice Spinosi.
“Nicolas Sarkozy will obviously comply with the sanction pronounced which is now final”commented to AFP Me Spinosi. “At the same time, he will refer the matter to the European Court in the coming weeks, as he is now entitled to do, to obtain the guarantee of rights that the French judges have denied him”he added. This referral does not, however, prevent the execution of the sanctions imposed.
Wiretapping affair
The former tenant of the Elysée was found guilty of having entered into a “corruption pact” with Gilbert Azibert, senior magistrate at the Court of Cassation, in 2014, alongside his historic lawyer Thierry Herzog, so that he transmits information and tries to influence an appeal filed by Nicolas Sarkozy in the Bettencourt affair.
And this, in exchange for a promised “help” for an honorary position in Monaco. The three men were given the same sentence, with the lawyer banned from wearing the black dress for three years. Their appeals were also rejected and these sentences are therefore final.
This decision comes less than three weeks before the opening, on January 6, of the trial into suspicions of Libyan financing of the 2007 presidential campaign, where Nicolas Sarkozy must appear for four months.
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