Sawt Falasteen - France's Sarkozy set to learn fate in Libya case

The ruling is the latest in a string of legal hurdles for the right-wing ex-leader, 70, who denies the charges. Sarkozy, who was president from 2007 to 2012, has already been convicted in two separate cases and stripped of France's highest honour.

The judgement has been overshadowed by the death on Tuesday in Beirut of Franco-Lebanese businessman Ziad Takieddine, a key accuser of Sarkozy in the case.

Takieddine had claimed several times that he helped deliver up to five million euros ($6 million) in cash from Kadhafi to Sarkozy and the former president's chief of staff in 2006 and 2007.

He then spectacularly retracted his claims before contradicting his own retraction, prompting the opening of another case against Sarkozy and also his model and musician wife Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, on suspicion of pressuring a witness.

The death after cardiac arrest of Takieddine, 75, who had been living in Lebanon to escape a French arrest warrant, has added new uncertainty to the proceedings, raising the prospect of the judgement possibly being postponed.

The former president will be present at the hearing, which is scheduled to begin at 10:00 am (0800 GMT), according to a person close to him who asked not to be named.

- 'Fight to the end' -

Prosecutors argued that Sarkozy and his aides devised a pact with Kadhafi in 2005 to illegally fund Sarkozy's victorious presidential election bid two years later.

They have demanded a seven-year jail term, although even if convicted, Sarkozy is likely to appeal, and it is doubtful he would be sent to prison immediately.

Investigators believe that in return Kadhafi was promised help to restore his international image after Tripoli was blamed by the West for bombing a plane in 1988 over Lockerbie, Scotland and another over Niger in 1989, killing hundreds of passengers.

Kadhafi was ultimately overthrown and killed by opponents in 2011 during the Arab Spring as NATO military intervention -- in which France under Sarkozy played a key role -- enforced a no-fly zone.

Eleven others were charged alongside Sarkozy, including his former right-hand man, Claude Gueant, his then-head of campaign financing, Eric Woerth, and former minister Brice Hortefeux, all of whom deny the charges.

The prosecution's case is based on statements from seven former Libyan dignitaries, trips to Libya by Gueant and Hortefeux, financial transfers, and the notebooks of the former Libyan oil minister Shukri Ghanem, who was found drowned in the Danube river in Vienna in 2012.

"It will take as long as it takes, but I will fight to the end to prove my innocence," Sarkozy told the French newspaper Le Figaro.

Sarkozy has faced a litany of legal problems since his mandate and has been charged separately with corruption, bribery, influence-peddling and campaign finance infringements.

He was first convicted for graft and sentenced to a one-year jail term, which he served with an electronic tag for three months before being granted conditional release.

Separately, he received a one-year jail term -- six months with another six months suspended -- in the so-called "Bygmalion affair" for illegal campaign financing. Sarkozy has gone to France's top appeals court to appeal that verdict.

He has faced repercussions beyond the courtroom, including losing his Legion of Honour -- France's highest distinction -- following the graft conviction.

Legal woes aside, the man who styled himself as the "hyper-president" while in office still enjoys considerable influence and popularity on the right of French politics, and is known to regularly meet with President Emmanuel Macron.

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B.Khalifa--SF-PST