Bismuth case: Nicolas Sarkozy wants to “discredit a court decision”, deplores the president of the court of appeal

He had denounced a “political fight” in the columns of Figaro. The first president of the Paris Court of Appeal regretted on Friday a “personal questioning” by Nicolas Sarkozy of the president of the court who tried him on appeal in the wiretapping case. The former head of state was sentenced on appeal on Wednesday in this case to the unprecedented penalty of three years’ imprisonment, including one year to be served under an electronic bracelet, for corruption and influence peddling, a first for a former president.

In an interview Thursday at Le Figaro where he again proclaimed his “innocence”, the former President of the Republic, who lodged an appeal in cation, affirmed that “certain magistrates are in a political fight”. “The president of the chamber who sentenced me attacked me by name in 2009 in an article in the newspaper Le Monde. Shouldn’t she have walked away, rather than judge a man she had publicly implicated so vehemently? “, he said in particular in this interview about Sophie Clément, the president of the court, before then attacking other magistrates in other matters concerning him.

“Personal challenge”

In a statement sent to the press, the first president of the Paris Court of Appeal, Jacques Boulard, “deplores the personal questioning of a magistrate, by the resumption of observations that she made, there is nearly 15 years, on a reform project, to discredit a court decision rendered collectively, after contradictory debates”.

“As the Superior Council of the Judiciary recently recalled”, he also writes, “in a democratic State of law, criticism of a court decision must in no case be expressed by personal questioning of the magistrate author of the decision”.