Video rushes expose BFMTV manipulation in Sarkozy-Libya witness tampering case
Mediapart has obtained the rushes, hitherto unseen in public, of a video interview with Ziad Takieddine, a key witness in the probe into the alleged Libyan funding of Nicolas Sarkozy’s 2007 presidential election campaign, in which the Franco-Lebanese business intermediary retracted his earlier testimony detailing how Sarkozy received the cash sums from Tripoli. The video was broadcast as an edited 32-second “exclusive” in November 2020 by French rolling news channel BFMTV, before Takieddine, who had been promised payment, finally disowned his retraction and an investigation into “witness tampering” was launched. The unedited video rushes, published in this report, reveal the extent of the manipulation by BFMTV in operation dubbed “Save Sarko”. Fabrice Arfi, Karl Laske and Antton Rouget report.
OnOn November 11th 2020, rolling news channel BFMTV broadcast video of a brief statement from Ziad Takieddine, a Franco-Lebanese businessman, who retracted damming testimony he had given to a French judicial investigation into the alleged part-funding of Nicolas Sarkozy’s 2007 presidential election campaign by the Libyan regime of Muammar Gaddafi.
