Trial of former President Sarkozy sheds light on France’s back-channel talks with Libya’s Gadhafi

PARIS (AP) - The monthslong trial of former French President Nicolas Sarkozy over the alleged illegal financing of his 2007 presidential campaign is shedding light on France's surprising back-channel talks with the government of then-Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi.

Family members of terrorist attacks sponsored by Gadhafi's regime have told the court they suspect that Sarkozy was willing to sacrifice the memories of their loved ones in order to normalize ties with oil-rich Libya almost two decades ago.

The trial, which started in January, ends Tuesday with Sarkozy's lawyers’ closing arguments. The verdict is expected at a later date.

French prosecutors requested a seven-year prison sentence for the 70-year-old former leader. Sarkozy, who was president from 2007 to 2012, has denied all wrongdoing.

Key moments in the trial focused on talks between France and Libya in the 2000s, when Gadhafi was seeking to restore diplomatic ties with the West. Before that, Libya was considered a pariah state for having sponsored attacks.

French families of victims of a 1989 plane bombing told the court about their shock and sense of betrayal as the trial questioned whether promises possibly made to Gadhafi's government were part of the alleged corruption deal.

In 1988, a bomb planted aboard a Pam Am flight exploded while the plane was over the Scottish town of Lockerbie, killing 270 people from 21 countries, including 190 Americans.

The following year, on Sept. 19, 1989, the bombing of UTA flight 772 over Niger killed 170 people, including 54 French nationals on board, after an in-flight explosion caused by a suitcase bomb.

Both French and U.S. investigations have tied both bombings to Libya, whose government had engaged in long-running hostilities with the U.S. and other Western governments.

Now, families of victims suspect French government officials close to Sarkozy promised to forget about the bombings in exchange for business opportunities with Libya and possibly, an alleged corruption deal.

"What did they do with our dead?" Nicoletta Diasio, whose father died in the bombing, told the court, saying she wondered if the memories of the victims "could have been used for bartering" in talks between France and Libya.

During the trial, Sarkozy said he has "never ever betrayed" families by using their loved ones as bargaining chips."

Libya’s initial steps to shed its pariah state status came in 2003 when it took responsibility for both the 1988 and 1989 plane bombings and agreed to pay billions in compensation to the victims' families.

Gadhafi also announced he was dismantling his nuclear weapons program, which led to the lifting of international sanctions.

Britain, France and other Western countries sought to restore a relationship with Libya for security, diplomatic and business purposes.

In 2007, Sarkozy welcomed Gadhafi to Paris with honors for a five-day official visit, allowing him to set up a Bedouin tent near the Elysee presidential palace. Many French people still remember that gesture, feeling Sarkozy went too far to please a dictator.

Sarkozy said during the trial he would have preferred to "do without" Gadhafi's visit at the time, but it came as a diplomatic gesture after Libya's release of Bulgarian nurses who were imprisoned and facing death sentences for a crime they said they did not commit.

On July 24, 2007, under an accord partially brokered by first lady Cecilia Sarkozy and EU officials, Libya released the five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor who had spend over eight years in prison.

They had been charged with deliberately infecting hundreds of children with the AIDS virus in the late 1990s - an allegation they denied.

Their release removed the last major obstacle to Libya rejoining the international community.

Sarkozy travelled to Tripoli for talks with Gadhafi the day after the medics were returned to Bulgaria on a French presidential plane.

In court he spoke of his "pride” for saving the medics, adding that their release wouldn’t have been possible without engaging with Gadhafi.

Accused of masterminding the attack on UTA Flight 772, Gadhafi's brother-in-law and intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senoussi was convicted in absentia to a life sentence by a Paris court in 1999 for the attack.

An international arrest warrant was issued for him and five other suspects.

Financial prosecutors have accused Sarkozy of having promised to lift the arrest warrant targeting al-Senoussi in exchange for alleged campaign financing.

In 2005, people close to Sarkozy, who was interior minister at the time, including his chief of staff Claude Guéant and junior minister Brice Hortefeux, travelled to Tripoli, where they met with al-Senoussi.

Both Guéant and Hortefeux told the court that it was a "surprise" meeting they were not aware of beforehand.

Al-Senoussi told investigative judges that millions of dollars were provided to support Sarkozy's campaign. Accused of war crimes, he is now imprisoned in Libya.

Sarkozy has strongly denied that.

Gadhafi's son, Seif al-Islam, told French news network RFI in January that he was personally involved in giving Sarkozy 5 million dollars in cash.

In a two-page statement to RFI radio, Al-Islam said Sarkozy initially "received $2.5 million from Libya to finance his electoral campaign" during the 2007 presidential election, in return for which Sarkozy would "conclude agreements and carry out projects in favour of Libya."

He said a second payment of $2.5 million in cash was handed over without specifying when it was given.

According to him, Libyan authorities expected that in return, Sarkozy would end a legal case about the 1989 UTA attack - including removing his name from an international warrant notice.

Sarkozy strongly denied those allegations.

"You'll never find one Libyan euro, one Libyan cent in my campaign," he said at the opening of the trial in January. "There's no corruption money because there was no corruption."

The Libyan civil war started in February 2011, with army units and militiamen loyal to Gadhafi opposing rebels.

Sarkozy was the first Western leader to take a public stance to support the rebellion.

On Feb. 25, 2011, he said the violence by pro-Gadhafi forces was unacceptable and should not go unpunished. "Gadhafi must go," he said at the time.

On March 10 that year, France was the first country in the world to recognize the National Transitional Council as the legitimate government of Libya.

"That was the Arab Spring," Sarkozy told the court. "Gadhafi was the only dictator who had sent (military) aircrafts against his people. He had promised rivers of blood, that's his expression."

Moammar Gadhafi was killed by opposition fighters in Oct. 2011, ending his four-decade rule of the North African country.