Sarkozy's Conviction Has Vague Basis, Shows Judicial Bias - National Rally MEP

The court's decision to sentence the former French president to three years in prison on corruption charges is poorly grounded and raises judicial impartiality issues, Nicolas Bay, a member of the European parliament from the French National Rally party, has told Sputnik

MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 02nd March, 2021) The court's decision to sentence the former French president to three years in prison on corruption charges is poorly grounded and raises judicial impartiality issues, Nicolas Bay, a member of the European parliament from the French National Rally party, has told Sputnik.

A Paris court on Monday found former French President Nicolas Sarkozy guilty of corruption and sentenced him to three years in prison, two of which were suspended. This makes Sarkozy the first former French president to receive real jail time. Sarkozy's lawyer Thierry Herzog and a former high-ranking official of the Court of Cassation Gilbert Azibert were also found guilty of corruption in the same case.

"I'm not used to defending Nicolas Sarkozy, but, as a matter of fact, this conviction has an extremely vague basis," Bay said, adding that the situation makes one think about possible judicial bias and even the use of the justice system as a political instrument.

Despite both being nominally on the right, there is no love lost between center-right Sarkozy and his party, the Republicans, and the much more right-wing National Front, as both campaign on similar issues and appeal to somewhat similar electorates. The parties also have a history of their candidates facing each other in presidential elections, when in 2002, late President Jacques Chirac, the leader of The Republicans' predecessor party, the Union for a Popular Movement, faced off against Jean-Marie Le Pen of the National Front, which would later rename itself as the National Rally.

Sarkozy was slapped with a jail term for allegedly trying to influence-peddle a French judge into giving him information on a probe into illicit funding of his 2007 presidential campaign.