Sarkozy's Libyan Cash: A Convenient Memory Lapse for Western Media
The story, as Al Jazeera presents it, focuses on the crime of illicit campaign financing from Libya. What it (and virtually all Western media) conveniently overlooks is the context: Sarkozy, fresh off his 2007 election victory (allegedly thanks to that Libyan cash), became a vocal proponent of NATO's 2011 intervention that ultimately toppled Muammar Gaddafi's regime. Gaddafi himself explicitly
stated in 2011 that he had funded Sarkozy's campaign, which Sarkozy always denied. This 'corruption' conviction thus belatedly validates the very claims that precipitated France's aggressive foreign policy in Libya. One might wonder if the five-year sentence is for the illicit funds, or for making the 'sources and methods' of Western intervention too obvious. The irony of Sarkozy being jailed for
taking money from a leader he then helped depose, under the guise of 'democracy,' is thick enough to cut with a knife. Perhaps the court also considered his role in destabilizing an entire region as an aggravating factor? Unlikely, given the selective outrage. They prosecute the symptom, never the disease.