“We cannot repair suffering with injustice: I am innocent,” declared Nicolas Sarkozy once again, Tuesday before the Paris Court of Appeal, addressing the families of victims of the UTA DC-10 attack. Ten people, including the former head of state, sentenced in September to five years in prison for criminal conspiracy, are being retried on appeal in the case of alleged Libyan financing of the 2007 presidential campaign.

Published on: 07/04/2026 - 10:23 Modified on: 07/04/2026 - 14:21

Nicolas Sarkozy explained on Tuesday April 7, at the start of his interrogation before the Paris Court of Appeal, that he intended to respond to "the suffering" of the families of victims of the UTA DC-10 attack with "the truth" of his innocence in the matter of alleged Libyan financing of his 2007 presidential campaign.

The former French head of state is notably suspected of having allowed his closest collaborators to negotiate such financing at the end of 2005 with a high Libyan dignitary, Abdallah Senoussi, sentenced to life in prison for having ordered this attack which, in 1989, cost the lives of 170 people, including 54 French people.

Several relatives of the victims came to testify last week, explaining how their words had been "overwritten by the words of those who have access to the microphones", denouncing the "denial" and "lies" of the defendants.

There are nine of them to be retried alongside Nicolas Sarkozy, sentenced in September to five years in prison for criminal conspiracy. Incarcerated for three weeks in La Santé prison, he is the first French head of state to be placed behind bars.

Also read: The essentials of Sarkozy's Libyan appeal trial: impossible to "believe you didn't know it"

“I would have had the same anger”

In the place of the relatives of the victims of the UTA DC-10, "I would have had the same anger, the same sorrow", said Nicolas Sarkozy in the opening remarks of his interrogation, which should extend over three or four days of hearing. “It is impossible to have a response commensurate with the suffering that has been expressed.” “Saying too much is acting, saying not enough is insensitive.”

“We (do not) respond to such unspeakable suffering as with the truth” but “we do not repair suffering with injustice: I am innocent,” he repeated, under the eyes of his wife Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, who came for the first time to the hearing since the start of the appeal trial in mid-March.

"The truth is that there is not a cent of Libyan money in my campaign", "the truth is that never, never, have I acted in favor of Abdallah Senoussi", who was looking for a pardon or an amnesty after his conviction, insisted Nicolas Sarkozy, recalling his driving role in setting up an international coalition which contributed to the fall of the regime of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

With AFP

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