Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy was found guilty and sentenced to five years in jail for campaign finance violations, a historic ruling in a case that has long captivated Parisian politics.

The court concluded that Sarkozy had exceeded legal spending limits during his 2007 presidential election campaign, and engaged in a conspiracy to obscure the sources of illicit funds he received from Libya’s late leader Muammar Gaddafi, as various evidence has demonstrated.

However, while the conviction targets money, it leaves untouched the far heavier human toll of his foreign policy decisions – from the 2011 Libya intervention to its cascade of wars, state collapse, and crises brought on by migration across the Mediterranean and Sahel. In other words, France’s courts can punish illicit euros, but fails to account for the blood spilled in the pursuit of regime change.

Earlier this year, while discussing the saga surrounding Sarkozy’s campaign funds, a source speaking to me anonymously, and corroborated by a former Libyan intelligence official, revealed for the first time that “a portion of the money reportedly came from Libyan intelligence, delivered across the Italian border by a female operative.”

While the court did not definitively link these funds to Sarkozy’s campaign expenditures, the claims echo earlier allegations by Ziad Takieddine, who passed away in........

© RT.com