trial

A Paris appeals court last week upheld former French president Nicolas Sarkozy’s conviction and jail sentence in 2021 for corruption and influence peddling. He is accused of offering to help a senior magistrate secure a comfortable post with Monaco’s Council of State in exchange for influence and information on legal procedures concerning him. Sarkozy and two co-accused, his lawyer Thierry Herzog and magistrate Gilbert Azibert, have now launched an ultimate appeal against their convictions. Mediapart has studied the detailed judgment of the appeals court, and publishes here extracts of the damning evidence it contains, and the story behind the case.

The trial opened in Paris on Monday of eight people accused of involvement in a terrorist attack in the Riviera city of Nice in July 2016, when Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel drove a heavy truck into crowds celebrating Bastille Day, causing the deaths of 86 people and injuring hundreds of others. But, as Matthieu Suc reports, the more than 850 civil parties – including direct and indirect victims – are likely to be left frustrated by the hearings, not only because of the absence of Bouhlel who died in a firefight with police, but also because of the weakness of the cases against the accused.

On August 22nd, a total of 1,295 migrants landed on the shores of southern England from France, a record daily figure, bringing the number of people who have made the same perilous crossing of the Channel so far this year to more than 22,500. Migrant smuggling gangs typically demand 3,000 euros per person for a place on the flimsy dinghies and key to the logistics of these networks are ‘mules’ who transport the boats and equipment, often from Germany, to the French coast. Camille Polloni travelled to the northern French city of Lille to follow the trial last week of one of them, whose lawyer said he was a “Mister average who works every day”.

At the end of an almost ten-month trial, the sentencing of 20 individuals accused of perpetrating or helping to perpetrate the November 13th 2015 terrorist attacks in and around Paris was pronounced on Wednesday, including a 30-year jail term without possibility of parole for one of the terrorists, Salah Abdeslam. Throughout the trial, Mediapart has been publishing the reactions to the proceedings from seven direct and indirect victims of the attacks. One of them is Georges Salines, whose daughter Lola, 28, was among the 90 people murdered at the Bataclan concert hall. In his latest contribution, written shortly before the verdicts were announced, he questions the sense behind severe jail sentences, and notably that, widely expected, handed to Abdeslam, which he says “abandons the idea of any possibility of remorse, of making amends, of redemption”.

The verdicts and sentencing at the end of a nine-month trial in Paris of 20 individuals accused of taking part in the November 13th 2015 terrorist attacks in the French capital, which claimed the lives of 130 people, are due to be announced late on Wednesday. Mediapart has been publishing first-hand reactions from seven victims of the massacres as they took part in the court proceedings. Aurélia Gilbert, 48, emerged physically unscathed from the shooting massacre that night at the Bataclan music hall, but has suffered significant psychological effects since. Here, at the close of the trial, she gives her account of how she has finally been relieved of “this burden that had lasted almost seven years”.