The corruption trial of former French President Nicolas Sarkozy in France is testing the country’s democratic resilience and the judiciary’s capacity to act as a counter-power to leaders bending democratic rules. Sarkozy, who led the country from 2007 to 2012, is accused of illegally funding his 2007 presidential campaign with millions of euros from one of Africa’s most notorious dictators, former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, in exchange for France strengthening its ties to Libya and reexamining its terrorism charge against Gaddafi’s brother-in-law and Libyan intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senussi. In March, French prosecutors demanded that if Sarkozy is found guilty, he must serve seven years of detention, pay the equivalent of $340,000 in damages, and be banned from political office.
The case marks the culmination of a decade-long judicial investigation into a sprawling corruption scheme “fanned by ambition, lust for power and greed, weaving its web in the highest levels of government,” according to the prosecution. Judges of the Paris Criminal Court heard arguments from Jan. 6 to April 10, and will deliver their verdict on Sept. 25.
In the meantime, much of the media attention has focused on how the “Sarkozy-Gaddafi affair” is challenging France and its democratic institutions, with too little coverage of how the corruption has harmed the people of Libya. Since NATO’s intervention in 2011 and Gaddafi’s resulting death, two competing factions emerged from the power struggle that followed the regime’s fall: the internationally backed Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA) turned Government of National Unity (GNU) in 2021 in western Libya and the Government of National Stability (GNS), led by de facto leader warlord Khalifa Haftar and his Libyan National Army (LNA) in Benghazi in the East. A civil war raged between these factions until October 2020. Since then, numerous United Nations-led attempts at a more permanent peace have failed to materialize on the ground. Tensions remain high and elections have not been held. Libyans continue to endure the consequences of decades of political instability, worsened by foreign interference, institutionalized corruption, and escalating repressive authoritarianism.
As the Sarkozy trial nears its conclusion this fall, it should provoke deeper scrutiny of how democracies engage with dictatorships – pushing policymakers to critically consider the real-world consequences of Western actions on the lives of local populations. Acknowledging Sarkozy’s legacy in Libya, France should go beyond its lip service to the U.N.-led peace process and work to foster democracy and fundamental freedoms Libyans crucially need, holding both the GNU and the LNA accountable. Alongside its democratic commitments, France should also reckon with the human rights consequences of its Libya foreign policy and interference in the post-Sarkozy era.
The Sarkozy-Gaddafi Affair
The Sarkozy-Gaddafi affair first hit French headlines in 2011, when French investigative news website Médiapart published exclusive confidential documents exposing the scandal. Over the next 14 years, outlets published more than 190 articles on the topic. The evidence appears overwhelming: secret meetings in Tripoli in 2005 between Sarkozy’s ministers and Senussi. In 1999, a French court convicted the intelligence chief of masterminding the 1989 terrorist attack on a French plane, killing 170 people. Journalists uncovered bank transfers between Libya and France in offshore bank accounts. An agenda note was found in 2012 on the corpse of Libya’s former prime minister, Choukri Ghanem, ordering a transaction of 6.5 million euros for Sarkozy’s campaign. Mountains of cash piled up in Sarkozy’s campaign headquarters, as confirmed by anti-corruption officers.
Sarkozy’s motivation appears to be simple: his campaign would receive millions of euros, strengthening his chances of becoming president. Gaddafi, on the other hand, sought judicial, diplomatic, and economic gains. First, Gaddafi wanted to exonerate Senussi from the life sentence he’d received in France for his role in the 1989 attack. Second, in the 2000s, Libya was attempting to shed its reputation as a “terrorism-state” and wanted sanctions lifted. France’s public support of Gaddafi’s regime could help foster increasing legitimization for the dictator. Third, French ministers and Libyan dignitaries negotiated a deal to provide Libya with surveillance equipment in the 2000s.
The accumulation of evidence in the public sphere instigated a judicial investigation into the Sarkozy-Gaddafi affair in 2013, which lasted until 2023, when judges sent Sarkozy and three of his former ministers back to court for this year’s historic trial.
The Cost to the Libyan People
Sarkozy’s trial is finally drawing attention to corruption’s devastating costs on Libya’s civilian population. Notably, the trial sheds light on the role of Amesys, a French cybersecurity firm that sold technology to the Libyan regime to intercept electronic communications and monitor online activities of Libyans between 2007 and 2011.
A 2011 Wall Street Journal investigation into the Tripoli Internet monitoring center, a highly sophisticated surveillance apparatus built by Gaddafi, found that in 2009 Amesys had equipped this security unit with Eagle, one of the most intrusive technologies for tracking online activities at the time. Eagle had the ability to conduct “strategic nationwide interception” that could monitor emails from Hotmail, Yahoo, and Gmail and see chat conversations on MSN instant messaging and AIM. Users in Libyan intelligence could “request the entire database” of Internet traffic “in real-time.”
Following the Wall Street Journal’s findings, two French NGOs – the International Federation of Human Rights and the League of Human Rights– lodged complaints with French courts in 2011. Two years later, French authorities launched an inquiry into the French cybersecurity firm. Six Libyan victims testified before the courts, arguing that their arrest and torture were directly linked to the spyware program. In 2021, the Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Unit of the Paris Judicial Court indicted the company and four of its executives for complicity in torture in Libya, which was later confirmed by an appellate court.
The Sarkozy-Gaddafi trial has shed further light on these claims. The meetings in 2005 between Sarkozy’s ministers and Senussi, organized by businessman and alleged middleman Ziad Takkieddine, likely facilitated Amesys’ commercial contracts. At the time, France lacked any regulatory measures covering the sale of such technology, which enabled these discussions to go largely unnoticed by French regulators.
With this French technology, Gaddafi was able to heavily monitor and hunt down government opponents who were subsequently arrested, arbitrarily detained or forcibly disappeared, and tortured with little consequence despite the implications for France. The alleged corruption between Sarkozy and Gaddafi undermined French democracy, but it also empowered Gaddafi’s brutal crackdown of Libyan dissidents and activists.
Even more so, the allegations that Sarkozy accepted millions in Libyan taxpayer money indicate that those who paid the largest price were the Libyan people, victims of an embezzlement scheme and of foreign support for a crackdown against those who spoke out. They faced economic hardship, political instability, and even violence as a result of corrupt dealings at the highest levels of power.
France’s Dangerous Game in Libya
In his dealings with the Libyan regime, Sarkozy strayed away from the more restrained foreign policy approach of his predecessor, Jacques Chirac (1995-2007), and instead pursued a more assertive stance. This shift culminated in the French- and British-led NATO intervention that toppled Gaddafi in 2011. Yet France’s interventionist legacy did not end with Sarkozy’s defeat in the 2012 presidential election. His successors, François Hollande (2012-2017) and Emmanuel Macron (2017-present), despite their criticism of the NATO operation, have continued to meddle in Libya’s political process at the expense of Libyans’ fundamental freedoms.
Since 2011, France has officially backed the U.N. Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL), supporting efforts to hold free elections, rebuild public institutions, and prevent armed conflict.
Yet as the U.N.-brokered Libyan Political Agreement in December 2015 was leading to the formation of the GNA, France’s domestic priorities shifted as the country was hit by multiple Islamist terrorist attacks in its capital. The national security crisis reinforced the Middle East strategy of then-Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, under former President Hollande, who prioritized a security approach in Libya at the expense of democratic considerations. Le Drian saw a pragmatic ally in Haftar, especially because of his victories against ISIS and al-Qaeda. For France’s counterterrorism operations in the Sahel region, Haftar appeared capable of imposing order and stability in a fragmented Libya that had become a haven for jihadist groups.
The Libyan Political Agreement called for broad inclusion of Libyan factions in the political process and civilian oversight of the military. In contrast to these terms, France began quietly bolstering Haftar’s eastern regime. Since early 2015, it provided support via special forces, advisers, and clandestine operations. The death of three French secret service agents in a helicopter crash near Benghazi in 2016 forced Hollande to confirm France’s military presence in the country.
France’s meddling and double standards in Libyan political affairs became more blatant under Macron, who hosted Haftar and the GNA’s then-Prime Minister Fayez al‑Sarraj for peace talks in July 2017, circumventing the established U.N. peacebuilding efforts. Though both pledged support for a ceasefire and prompt national elections, Macron’s move – making him the first European leader to host Haftar – granted the warlord international legitimacy, despite EU, NATO, and U.N. support for the rival GNA. Although professing support for the Libyan Political Agreement, Macron failed to include other factions in the talks and made no demands on Haftar.
In May 2018, Macron continued to sideline the U.N.-led process by convening Haftar and Sarraj along with Libyan parliamentary leaders, where he proposed a plan to hold elections by December 10, a timeline widely seen as unrealistic at the time. Macron’s unilateral initiative only incentivized the U.N. plan’s detractors to stall negotiations. After this plan fell apart, U.N. special envoy Ghassan Salamé postponed elections till spring 2019, but Haftar derailed the process by launching an offensive on Tripoli.
In response to the offensive, France leveraged diplomatic protection to thwart the EU from condemning Haftar, downplayed the humanitarian toll, and portrayed the warlord’s opponents as terrorists. On the ground, U.N.-backed forces found four American-made Javelin anti-tank missiles, supplied by France, in a Haftar-controlled stronghold south of Tripoli. Meanwhile, France’s Emirati allies hired Russian mercenaries, cementing a long-term Russian presence in Libya. Through the end of 2019, Haftar’s forces made fast territorial advances until Turkey sent troops to bolster opposing GNA forces, prompting the GNA to declare a unilateral ceasefire in October 2020.
Going Beyond Counterterrorism
Paris’ adulation of the Libyan war general goes beyond counterterrorism; it is also rooted in its strategic alliances with key military partners across the wider Middle East, primarily Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, both major buyers of French weapons and backers of Haftar’s LNA. The warlord also enjoys support from Russia, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, while the GNU is backed by Turkey and Qatar. Marginalizing Haftar could jeopardize lucrative military contracts with Egypt and the UAE, two of France’s most important clients. Although the Franco-Emirati relationship has deteriorated since 2021, Sisi and Macron’s ties remain strong.
Natural resources also dictate France’s presence in Libya, as the French energy company Total holds exploration rights in several oilfields in the West and a share of one of Libya’s main oil companies.
Furthermore, as Ali Albayaa, a research fellow specializing in the Middle East and North Africa region at the Human Rights Foundation, told us, “We should not overlook Macron’s personal ambitions of projecting France as a guarantor of European continental security.” Libya is a crucial piece in France’s puzzle, as Haftar controls the majority of the country’s territory and, by extension, the masses of immigrants pouring into France in search of a safer future. Haftar’s capacity to shape immigration realities in Europe partly explains France’s tacit support to the dictator.
The Costs of French Realpolitik
Not only does France’s diplomatic and military support for Haftar delegitimize the U.N. political process, but it also abets the perpetuation of human rights abuses by Haftar’s LNA. In fact, Haftar himself was convicted by a U.S. judge in 2022 of war crimes for his role in ordering extrajudicial killings and torture in Libya. The militias that make up the LNA are no better and have been accused of a host of human rights abuses. The Tareq Bin Zeyad Brigade (TBZ), led by Haftar’s son Saddam, has been accused of crushing any opposition to the LNA. Amnesty International has documented the TBZ’s links to a “catalog of horrors,” particularly against migrants, including torture, mistreatment, and forced expulsions in total impunity.
Haftar’s 2019 offensive on Tripoli, which France tirelessly sought to shield from international condemnation, was marred by significant human casualties, killing at least 430 civilians and displacing 250,000 more.
Rampant corruption and mismanagement further infringe on the local populations’ fundamental freedoms. One example is the collapse of two dams in September 2023 in the city of Derna after a storm brought heavy rains to the country’s northeastern coast. The resulting devastation killed at least 4,000 people and left tens of thousands of people missing to this day. Corruption within both the GNU and the LNA is to blame for the floods’ cataclysmic impact. The dams collapsed after over a decade of warnings about their degrading state and a half-hearted attempt to fix them by Libyan politicians on both sides. The widespread protests that erupted following the disaster were met with the eastern regime’s brutal retaliation and arbitrary arrests of activists.
Jalel Harchaoui, an analyst on Libya security and associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute for Defense and Security Studies, pointed out to us that these authoritarian tactics are not unique to the Eastern regime; in fact, the GNU in the West has adopted more totalitarian actions in recent months, with little objection from the international community.
France’s Pervasive Legacy
“What started out as military aid in the context of France’s fight against terrorism ended with Haftar managing to transform that technical aid into political and ideological support,” Harchaoui explained in an interview. “Once Haftar gained absolute control of Benghazi from ISIS, al-Qaeda, and Libyan political opponents in 2017, France should have ended its support. Instead, under Macron’s presidency, it continued to support Haftar diplomatically.” Harchaoui concluded, “It’s in the name of realpolitik that France lacked realism in Libya. By solely backing Haftar, France left key players out of its unilateral vision for the country’s future. As a result, France does not hold the same relevance that it did in 2019. Libya has turned into a playing field for non-Western powers.”
Despite its waning influence, the damage France has done will persist. The Libyan civil and political spaces are rife with human rights violations, as both regimes deploy authoritarian practices to repress any form of dissent and political pluralism. Libya’s window of opportunity for nationwide elections, which briefly opened in 2021, is not available today due to the partisan nature of foreign interference that has sown divisions rather than the unity sought by the U.N.-led political process. France needs to bear responsibility for the long-term consequences of foreign interference.
With the Sarkozy-Gaddafi trial, French democracy upholds its commitment to holding its former leaders accountable for their wrongdoings. France owes this self-healing, in large part, to its civil society. Without the Médiapart journalists who first uncovered the affair, or anti-corruption organizations like Sherpa, Transparency International, and Anticor, which coalesced as civil parties in the trial “to underscore the systemic mechanisms facilitating financial flows and the associated repercussions on the populations of impacted states,” and without the French Association of Victims of Terrorism (AfVT), which also joined as a civil party to represent the families of the DC10-UTA flight victims, France’s judiciary would not have had the tools to address the complex web of corruption weaved by Sarkozy, Gaddafi, and their respective ministers.
If Libyans are to have a real chance at democracy, France must stop undermining the U.N.-led peace process by legitimizing warlords through backchannel diplomacy. Instead, it should hold perpetrators of violence in both Libyan regimes accountable for their human rights abuses through individualized and targeted sanctions.
On the commercial front, any lucrative contract passed between France and its Middle East allies should be conditioned on the respect of human rights. Repression should not be rewarded. And at the grassroots level, in light of civil society’s vital role in democratic processes – as witnessed during the Sarkozy trial – France should support and fund civil society efforts in Libya to ensure diverse voices are included in a viable political solution. Although Libyan civil society organizations, such as Together We Build It, are working to address the absence of women’s participation in peace-building processes, foreign powers should also empower an intergenerational, gendered approach to peace-building. It is only by pushing for accountability, transparency, and letting Libyan voices be heard that France will truly play a constructive role in ensuring Libyans’ access to their fundamental freedoms.
