On October 6, 2006, a close ally of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Brice Hortefeux, attended a meeting with Libyan officials during which the funding by Muammar Gaddafi of Sarkozy’s 2007 election campaign, to the tune of €50 million, was discussed. That’s the claim of French news site Mediapart, a claim founded on a document purporting to be from the archives of the Libyan secret service. Hortefeux has refuted what he calls “a categorical and verifiable lie”. Now OWNI has pieced together his schedule during those crucial days in 2006.
At the time Nicolas Sarkozy was the French Interior Minister, and Brice Hortefeux his minister for local government. His ministerial agenda from that period can still be consulted via the archive.org site. On the morning of Thursday, October 5, Hortefeux attended an agriculture summit in Cournon, a fact confirmed by an article in Le Figaro at the time which noted that “the right arm of Nicolas Sarkozy was able to observe the great form of Chirac”.
Hortefeux then made his way to Cancale in north-west France, where at 14:30 he presided over a meeting of the small towns of France. At 17:00 in the evening he made a “whistle-stop visit” to the commune of Saint Brieuc, as evidenced by the blog of the UMP deputy Marc Le Fur, as well as a photo of Hortefeux taken that night, time-stamped October 5, 2006, 19:59 p.m.
Visit of Brice Hortefeux to Saint-Brieuc, October 5, 2006
On the morning of the now famous Friday, October 6, the day Hortefeux allegedly attended the meeting with the Libyans, La Correspondence économique, a subscription-based newsletter, reported that Brice Hortefeux would be a guest on the Christian-focused television show ‘Face aux chrétiens’ (Face the Christians) to be broadcast at noon. The daily newspaper La Croix subsequently revealed that another guest replaced the minister at the last minute.
According to the agenda, at 17:30 Hortefeux was to confer the Knights Cross of the Order of Merit on Marcel Astruc, vice-president of the Association of Mayors of Rural France (AMFR), in Montpeyroux, a village in the Puy-de-Dôme region. This is also confirmed in the October 2006 bulletin of the AMFR.
Contacted by OWNI, Marcel Astruc remembers having been decorated by Brice Hortefeux somewhere between 18:00 or 18:30. The minister had left around 20:00 to confer another decoration, back in Cournon. At 07:00 the following morning, Hortefeux attended the General Assembly of the Union of Mayors and Representatives of the department of Eure, in the Evreux region. There he gave a speech on local and inter-municipal finances.
Conferring the Medal of Merit on Marcel Astruc, Montpeyroux, Friday, October 6, 2006
By plane, it takes three hours and 15 minutes to travel from Paris to Tripoli, not including travel time to and from airports. Assuming Hortefeux had no other appointments on the morning of October 6, it is physically possible that he could have made a round trip between the fifth and the afternoon of the sixth, before returning to Clermont-Ferrand, located 20 minutes from the village of Montpeyroux. Contacted by OWNI, a UMP colleague of Hortefeux was not in a position to respond to our questions.
Moussa Koussa, the head of Libya’s intelligence service, has denied having signed the document attributed to him by Mediapart, stating that “all these stories are falsified (and) without foundation“. Bashir Saleh, Gaddafi’s treasurer – who has since found refuge in Paris despite being wanted by Interpol – has issued a statement through his lawyer expressing “the greatest possible reservations about the authenticity” of the document. Questioned by Mediapart, the businessman and arms dealer Ziad Takieddine appeared to give credence to the document. That’s all the more surprising given that he has denied having attended the meeting that day.
The file detailing Takieddine’s travel itinerary, published by OWNI on the occasion of the publication of the e-book Au pays de Candy (In the Land of Candy) about the case of French security system manufacturer Amesys, reveals that he was in Geneva on October 6, 2006.
Takieddine was indicted for perjury in September 2011, and previously castigated Mediapart for revelations published by them that concerned him. This week he said that the document “reflects an agreement signed by Moussa Koussa to support the presidential campaign of Nicolas Sarkozy in 2007 “, and told Mediapart that “Hortefeux was physically there on that date and other dates, for sure“.
While Hortefeux denies having met with Moussa Koussa and Bashir Saleh, he did explain to Mediapart that he had met with Abdullah Senussi. That admission raises a few questions. Senussi, the other head of Libyan intelligence mentioned in the document, is currently in Mauritania, sentenced to life imprisonment by French courts for his involvement in the bombing of UTA flight 772, the worst terrorist attack ever known to France (170 killed, including 54 French). Senussi was also the main go-to for Ziad Takieddine in Libya, and it was he who had asked the French company Amesys to develop a system of mass surveillance of the Internet there.
Nicolas Sarkozy, meanwhile, has filed a complaint for “false (and) publishing false news”. Regarding Amesys, he has never responded.
Image Credits: Abode of Chaos [CC-by]; Marc Le Fur (Saint-Brieuc); Marcel Astruc (Montpeyroux)
