The former president was also attacked for his 'cavalier' approach towards the court, at the end of proceedings in the trial over alleged campaign finance violations for his 2012 reelection bid.
Ten men and three women aged between 18 and 30 went on trial at a Paris court on Thursday accused of online harassment and, for eight of them, making death threats, in abuse that targeted a teenage girl who posted videos critical of Islam on Instagram and who has since been living in police protection.
Prosecutors allege that Sarkozy’s conservative party splurged nearly double the 22.5 million euros permitted under electoral law on lavish campaign rallies, and then hired a friendly public relations agency to hide the cost.
A French court on Wednesday ordered Air France and Airbus to stand trial for 'involuntary homicide' over the June 2009 crash of an Air France Airbus A330 passenger flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris which plummeted into the Atlantic Ocean killing all 228 people on board.
The trial began on Monday in Versailles of former executives of the French arm of Swedish retailer IKEA, as well as the corporate entity itself, on charges of spying on the private lives of hundreds of staff, in a scandal first revealed by Mediapart eight years ago.
Georges Tron, a conservative former minister and mayor of Draveil, a southern Paris suburb, has been handed a sentence of five years in jail, two suspended, after he was found guilty of raping and sexually assaulting a female member of his townhall staff.
A French court on Monday began hearing the case of Trân Tô Nga, a 78-year-old woman of joint Vietnamese and French nationality who fell victim to the herbicidal chemical cocktail known as Agent Orange, massively employed by US forces during the Vietnam War. Her civil complaint targets more than 20 US chemical firms for their part in the production of Agent Orange, to which almost five million of the Vietnamese population are estimated to have been, like herself, directly exposed, causing deaths, diseases and also malformations among their descendants. François Bougon reports on what Trân Tô Nga and her supporters hope will be an historic trial following the rebuttal of victims’ complaints before US courts.
Former French prime minister Édouard Balladur, 91, is to stand trial on Tuesday on charges he funded his 1995 presidential campaign with secret kickbacks from French arms sales abroad, as part of a scandal that has been dubbed 'the Karachi affair'.
A Paris court on Wednesday handed 14 defendants jail sentences ranging from four years to life imprisonment for their part in helping terrorist gunmen in their shooting massacres over three days in January 2015 at the offices of Charlie Hebdo magazine and of hostages at a Jewish supermarket, and the murder of a trainee policewoman, killing a total of 17 people.
The trial in Paris of former French president Nicolas Sarkozy for allegedly trying to bribe a magistrate in return for information about an investigation into his party finances was suspended shortly after it opened on Wednesday to allow a medical examination of one of the two other defendants.
The trial of 14 people accused of complicity in the January 2015 attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo magazine and which was due to end on November 13th has been suspended after one of the principal suspects, Ali Riza Polat, tested positive for Covid-19.
At the trial in Paris of 14 people accused of aiding the January 2015 terrorist attacks in the capital, Zarie Sibony, 28, gave a harrowing account of the four-hour siege at the kosher store where she worked as a cashier, when Amédy Coulibaly murdered four hostages and, she recalled, told his captives 'You are Jews and French, the two things I hate the most'.
The trial in Paris of 14 people accused of complicity in the separate January 2015 terrorist attacks in the French capital against Charlie Hebdo magazine, a kosher store, and a policewoman, which left 17 victims dead, opened on Wednesday. Absent from the hearings are three defendants whose fate or eventual whereabouts is unknown. In this second of a two-part report, Matthieu Suc details the story of how the three got away, and the evidence that at least one of them is alive and hiding from justice in the Middle East.
The trial of 14 people accused of complicity in the separate January 2015 terrorist attacks in and around the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo magazine, against a Jewish food store, and a policewoman, opened in the French capital on Wednesday. The three perpetrators, who murdered a total of 17 people, were themselves shot dead by police. Absent from the hearings are three defendants whose fate or eventual whereabouts is unknown, while others have slipped through the net of the investigations. In this first of a two-part report, Matthieu Suc details the background and chronology of events leading to this marathon trial due to end in November.
The marathon trial of 14 people accused of being accomplices to the terrorist killings of 17 people in separate attacks in early January 2015 on the offices of Charlie Hebdo magazine and a Jewish food store, and the shooting of a policewoman, opened in Paris on Wednesday and is due to run into November.
