Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - October 1, 2021, Winnipeg, Manitoba C M Y K PAGE A14 A 14 FRIDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2021 ● WINNIPEGFREEPRESS.COMNEWS I WORLD A WEEKLY LOOK TOWARDS A POST-PANDEMIC FUTURE WITH JEN ZORATTI. TO GET THIS WEEKLY NEWSLETTER SENT STRAIGHT TO YOUR INBOX, sign up at winnipegfreepress.com/email Sarkozy convicted in campaign financing case P ARIS — French ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy, who was con-victed Thursday and sentenced to a year of house arrest for illegal cam- paign financing of his unsuccessful 2012 re-election bid, will appeal the rul- ing, his lawyer said. The court said Sarkozy would be al- lowed to serve the one-year sentence at home by wearing an electronic mon- itoring bracelet. Sarkozy’s lawyer, Thierry Herzog, noted that the sentence corresponds to the maximum his client faced. He said he had spoken with Sarkozy, who had asked him to appeal. “The verdict won’t be enforceable” pending appeal, he added. Sarkozy, France’s president from 2007 to 2012, had vigorously denied wrongdoing during the trial in May and June. Sarkozy wasn’t present at the Paris court for the ruling. He is accused of having spent almost twice the max- imum legal amount of 22.5 million eu- ros (US$27.5 million) on the re-election bid that he lost to Socialist Francois Hollande. The court stated that Sarkozy “knew” the legal limit was at stake and “volun- tarily” failed to supervise additional expenses. Thursday’s verdict comes after Sar- kozy, 66, was found guilty on March 1 of corruption and influence peddling in another case. He was given a year in prison, and two years suspended, in that case but is free pending appeal. It is the first time in France’s mod- ern history that a former president has been convicted and sentenced to a prison term for actions during his term. Sarkozy’s predecessor, Jacques Chirac, was found guilty in 2011 of misuse of public money during his time as Paris mayor and was given a two-year sus- pended prison sentence. In the campaign financing case, pros- ecutors concluded that Sarkozy knew weeks before the 2012 election that his expenses — which are strictly limited under French law — were getting close to the legal maximum. They accused him of having ignored two notes from his accountants warning about the money issue. The court on Thursday said despite being aware of the risk of exceeding the limit, he chose to organize many rallies, including giant ones. “These rallies have been approved by Nicolas Sarkozy and he took advantage of them,” the court said. During the trial, Sarkozy told the court the extra money didn’t go into his campaign, but instead helped make other people richer. He denied any “fraudulent intent.” He also insisted he didn’t handle the day-to-day organiza- tion because he had a team to do that and therefore couldn’t be blamed for the amount of spending. In addition to the former president, 13 other people went on trial, including members of his conservative Republic- ans party, accountants and heads of the communication group in charge of or- ganizing the rallies, Bygmalion. They have all been found guilty, with sentences going from a suspended prison sentence to two years of house arrest with an electronic bracelet. Vari- ous charges include forgery, fraud and complicity in illegal campaign finan- cing. Some have acknowledged wrong- doing and detailed the system of false invoices that aimed to cover up the overspending. Sarkozy retired from active politics in 2017, but is still playing a role be- hind the scenes. French media have re- ported that he is involved in the process of choosing a conservative candidate ahead of France’s presidential election next year. — The Associated Press SYLVIE CORBET AND NICOLAS VAUX-MONTAGNY LUDOVIC MARIN / POOL VIA AP, FILES Ex-French president Nicolas Sarkozy (above) will appeal the ruling, his lawyer said. Former Nazi camp secretary, 96, caught after skipping trial ITZEHOE, Germany — A former sec- retary for the SS commander of the Stutthof concentration camp skipped the start Thursday of her trial in Ger- many on more than 11,000 counts of ac- cessory to murder. She was picked up several hours later and ordered held in custody. The 96-year-old woman left her home near Hamburg in a taxi on Thursday morning, a few hours before proceed- ings were due to start at the state court in Itzehoe, court spokeswoman Fred- erike Milhoffer said. The court issued an arrest warrant and delayed the reading of the indict- ment until the next scheduled hearing on Oct. 19 because that couldn’t be done in the defendant’s absence. The accused woman previously had “announced that she didn’t want to come” to court, but that did not provide sufficient grounds for detaining her ahead of the trial, Milhoffer said. Given the woman’s age and condition, she had not been expected “actively to evade the trial,” Milhoffer added. Police found the defendant and she was brought to the court on Thursday afternoon. A court statement said that she was being taken to a detention cen- tre. Prosecutors argue that the woman was part of the apparatus that helped the Nazi’s Stutthof camp function dur- ing the Second World War more than 75 years ago. The court said in a statement before the trial that the defendant allegedly “aided and abetted those in charge of the camp in the systematic killing of those imprisoned there between June 1943 and April 1945 in her function as a stenographer and typist in the camp commandant’s office.” Despite her advanced age, the Ger- man woman was to be tried in juvenile court because she was under 21 at the time of the alleged crimes. German media identified her as Irmgard Furch- ner. Efraim Zuroff, the head Nazi hunter at the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s of- fice in Jerusalem, told The Associated Press that “if she is healthy enough to flee, she is healthy enough to be incar- cerated.” Her flight, he added, “should also af- fect the punishment.” The case against Furchner relies on German legal precedent established in cases over the past decade that any- one who helped Nazi death camps and concentration camps function can be prosecuted as an accessory to the mur- ders committed there, even without evidence of participation in a specific crime. A defence lawyer told Der Spiegel magazine that the trial would centre on whether the 96-year-old had knowledge of the atrocities that happened at the camp. “My client worked in the midst of SS men who were experienced in violence — however, does that mean she shared their state of knowledge? That is not necessarily obvious,” lawyer Wolf Mol- kentin said. According to other media reports, Furchner was questioned as a witness during past Nazi trials and said at the time that the former SS commandant of Stutthof, Paul Werner Hoppe, dictated daily letters and radio messages to her. Furchner testified she was not aware of the killings that occurred at the camp while she worked there, dpa reported. Initially a collection point for Jews and non-Jewish Poles removed from Danzig — now the Polish city of Gdansk — Stutthof from about 1940 was used as a so-called “work education camp” where forced labourers, primarily Pol- ish and Soviet citizens, were sent to serve sentences and often died. From mid-1944, tens of thousands of Jews from ghettos in the Baltics and from Auschwitz filled the camp, along with thousands of Polish civilians swept up in the brutal Nazi suppression of the Warsaw uprising. Others incarcerated there included political prisoners, accused criminals, people suspected of homosexual activ- ity and Jehovah’s Witnesses. More than 60,000 people were killed there by being given lethal injections of gasoline or phenol directly to their hearts, or being shot or starved. Others were forced outside in winter without clothing until they died of exposure, or were put to death in a gas chamber. — The Associated Press MARKUS SCHREIBER AND KIRSTEN GRIESHABER A_14_Oct-01-21_FP_01.indd A14 9/30/21 9:10 PM ;