Never former Prime Minister was also below

It receives the journalists to the string, to prevail against the policy of Nicolas Sarkozy, rode endless his arguments with his lawyers and left as soon as he in the hive of his small office in the avenue Foch, Paris, for putting his tennis and running in the alleys of the bois de Boulogne. A few days of the opening - this afternoon - of his trial in the Clearstream case, Dominique de Villepin released the energy of those who will finally be able to do battle, "repair an injustice", said, almost five years after the beginning of the case (read also page 2). Energy, it also burns in to give the Exchange, display a master and a phlegm is not customary. "I am calm, I am zen," says by mimicking the voice of Jacques Chirac. "Gesticulation", it is for the opposing party. I.e. for Nicolas Sarkozy, which he pretended to be surprised that he has denounced mid-September, since the Brazil, the excess of "pharmacies and combined" about Clearstream. "It may be a little twisted to be obsessed to the point this record of mind", immediately replicated Dominique de Villepin. Never former Prime Minister was also below.

The opportunity was too good to use the words of the head of State to justify its analysis of the record "politicized since the beginning, confiscated, for the sole benefit of a civil party, Nicolas Sarkozy". Convinced that the only thing "that can understand the President, it is power," Dominique de Villepin uses the same weapons to defend themselves. Beyond the matter of State, it is this "mano a mano" between two hungry for power, two irreconcilable rivals, two policies the same camp holding or having held the highest executive functions, which gives its size at the trial. Today, Dominique de Villepin retains most its shots. He is the President of the Republic who tried to exploit Clearstream against him, and not vice versa. "There is one thing which is clear in the record, it is that Nicolas Sarkozy was able to earlier, or even much earlier, that he did say the bottom of the case", repeats to who wants to hear it. "It was marked with great violence attention to hang the culprit to a croc butcher (...)" "It will have to be explained, when the time comes, when the light will be done on this folder on the hard was his own", he launched Thursday last on LCI.

"For that appear the real story"

The judicial strategy is built. "Depoliticize" the trial, it is Dominique de Villepin dismount point by point order (ORTC) that the returns before the 11th Chamber of the correctional tribunal of Paris for "complicity of calumnious denunciation, complicity of the use of forgery". "Case is constructed as a puzzle, we're going to surprise in surprise: whenever a clarification point, other information flows disorder", he says, denouncing a "organised confusion", the very opposite of the "judicial approach, based on questioning". Stubbornly refuses to enter into the details of the record, it is better to denounce the "political reading" which, according to him, guided magistrate Jean-Marie of Huy and Henri Pons. "The participation of Dominique de Villepin to acts (...)" "handling a gives turning political," they write in fact. They hold particular "participation deliberate (former Prime Minister, Editor's note) to a fraudulent process" and highlight "the context of competition policy with Nicolas Sarkozy".

Dominique de Villepin is a central goal at the hearing: "Put all this in order to appear the real story."The real story The former Prime Minister was deliberately placed, left register or operated the name of Nicolas Sarkozy in the lists of so-called occult accounts open to Clearstream - a Luxembourg clearing house - to discredit his political opponent in the presidential race Knew that the list of names included stars of show-biz, magistrates, policies, lawyers... He asked the General Rondot (intelligence specialist) to investigate the files, then Jean-Louis Gergorin, ex-vice-président of EADS and one of his relatives, to transmit them to the judge that he knew them to be false

Embarrassing questions

Dominique de Villepin has its version: Yes, well there was a meeting on 9 January 2004, at the Quai d'Orsay between himself and General Philippe Rondot, Jean-Louis Gergorin, but "it approached me as Minister for Foreign Affairs", he explains. Yes, far asked Rondot to keep it informed of the international developments of the case: "It was my role."But, he never gave instruction to Jean-Louis Gergorin, in April 2004, to transmit these listings to justice. "What interest would I have had to request a verification of information that I would have known false" to carry Above all, "there are more than 40 civil parties of hundreds of names in the folder, including Nagy and Bocsa and is Nicolas Sarkozy himself who is designated as a victim."

No doubt, the hearings will be hard. Former Prime Minister will have to respond to the increasingly numerous issues surrounding the role he played. How could he not know after loaded Rondot to investigate these listings Why not applying article 40 of the Penal Code, which requires any employee with responsibilities to denounce to the Prosecutor's Office, disputed facts... Dominique de Villepin has all these embarrassing questions. Stigmatize the politicization of the case it is also, for him, to challenge the trial itself as unprecedented, the head of State is a party civil. Former Prime Minister cannot fail to note that it is Nicolas Sarkozy who has the upper hand on the careers of judges and is guarantor of the independence of the judiciary. "A trial to serene, justice must be independent," slip. As for him giving reason, the Paris Prosecutor, Jean-Claude Marin, engaged recently on Europe 1 in a sort of indictment before the trial. Here again, a first.

"Wounded boar."

But counsel for former Prime Minister know that civil parties expect that he also skidded at the hearing, that it is there engaged in one of these enthusiastic wow he's secret. This is not a chance if Imad Lahoud, the computer scientist suspected of handling listings, Jean-Louis Gergorin or Nicolas Sarkozy began to provoke him. The mood of Dominique de Villepin, is the imponderable of the trial.

His vehemence, its side "injured boar which will go to the end", according to the expression of an advisor to the Elysee Palace, no doubt prompted Nicolas Sarkozy to never relax on the Clearstream case. Former Prime Minister is in measured risks but that it was of general interest. For him, his opposition to Nicolas Sarkozy, it is also a political struggle.

I always put a handkerchief over my personal interests." "If I have expressed reservations about the policy, it is because the France takes a considerable delay the rest of the world, that economic models are changing, and it is still not what is the France," he fumed. Despite the trial, and whatever the outcome, "I will continue", he says. Because "I realized", after the parenthesis of the French Presidency of the European Union, "that Nicolas Sarkozy would not change, focusing on domestic policy calculations." Around him, most have waived him say things. "I felt duty to say because the France may not waive reform," he says. May sometimes expose to denounce, as in April, when he had unwisely estimated that there were "a revolutionary risk" in the country. His relatives come to create a club of reflection and support (clubvillepin.fr); They organize it a series of interventions for the end of the fall, and himself has never excluded to prepare for the presidential election of 2012. The only thing that seems to have abandoned, it is closer to François Bayrou for the next regional elections. The President of the Modem, this summer, chose to other alliances (PS), certainly more productive in the immediate future.

Find the protagonists of the case in slideshow