The French prosecutor whose office led the case against the former president Nicolas Sarkozy over campaign funding from Libya has denied the investigation was motivated by hatred.
In a rare public comment, Jean-François Bohnert, France’s top prosecutor for financial crimes, told RTL radio on Monday: “We have no hatred to express … Our compass is the law, it is the rule of law.”
Sarkozy was last week sentenced to five years in prison after a court found him guilty of criminal conspiracy over a scheme to get election campaign funds from the regime of the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. He said after the verdict that the “hatred” towards him “definitely has no limits”.
Sarkozy, who denied wrongdoing and has appealed, will be informed next month when he is to begin his jail sentence.
The judge, Nathalie Gavarino, handed down a special form of sentence that means Sarkozy, 70, will have to begin serving his prison term even if he appeals. She justified the move on the grounds that the offences were of “exceptional gravity” and “likely to undermine citizens’ trust”.
Since delivering her verdict last week, Gavarino, the head judge at the three-month trial of Sarkozy and 11 others, has received death threats and messages threatening her with “serious violence”. Paris prosecutors have opened two investigations into threats of violence against her.
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, said in a social media post at the weekend that attacks or death threats against magistrates were “unacceptable”. He said: “The rule of law is the foundation of our democracy … The independence of the judiciary, its impartiality, as well as the protection of the magistrates who uphold it, are its essential pillars.”
Gérald Darmanin, justice minister in the outgoing government, wrote in post at the weekend: “Intimidation and death threats against judges are absolutely unacceptable in a democracy.”
Sarkozy was found guilty of criminal conspiracy but acquitted of three separate charges of corruption, misuse of Libyan public funds and illegal election campaign funding. The public prosecutor had told the court that Sarkozy entered into a “Faustian pact of corruption with one of the most unspeakable dictators of the last 30 years” to gain election funding from Gaddafi for his successful presidential campaign in 2007.
Sarkozy, 70, who was the rightwing president of France from 2007 to 2012, said in an interview in Le Journal du Dimanche on Sunday that the verdict and sentence against him had “violated … all the limits of the rule of law”.
Sarkozy, who is expected to enter prison at a date set by the prosecutor in the coming weeks, was seen watching a Paris Saint-Germain football match at the Parc des Princes stadium on Saturday. He also filmed a video of his wife, the singer and former model Carla Bruni, singing the Beatles’ Let It Be in his support.
