Le Monde, February 3, 2011
From his years in power, Francois Leotard remembers first violence. He speaks with the soft tone, almost monotone, which has always been his, the sun set in the beautiful garden of his home in Frejus, where he lives year-round. At 68, he kept this profile to the old, in the close-cropped hair. We visited the olive trees he planted, sought a myrtle liqueur macerated he himself, as in Corsica to his mother's family. But now he sits in the light blue of the Mediterranean winter, all his words tell of the brutality, insults and betrayals of a medium that has left it without regret. There are some
weeks, the former Socialist minister Michel Charasse, now a member of the Constitutional Council, he was discouraged, he assures, to go to the judge's appointment Trévidic, which investigates the springs of the Karachi attack. Francois Leotard went there anyway, Monday, Jan. 31. But before the magistrate, who heard as a witness, he says he immediately put the record straight: "We wanted to end the judges and the prosecution depends on the power, you understand that I do not believe the justice of my country ... "
This time, it remains a terrible portrait gallery. He scrolls in the order of their appearance in the case of Karachi. First, here Jacques Chirac, "slung on his good-natured cynicism." Then Dominique de Villepin, whom he hates the side "spiked helmet" and he suspects to fuel rumors in the case of Karachi "by deep hatred for Nicolas Sarkozy."
When the judge asked him about these men, he was exhausted. And especially his successor as defense, Charles Millon, Jacques Chirac was so named precisely because it was his worst enemy. He repeated the formula with greediness he did write the minutes to be sure it is known to all, "because you will have in few hours the minutes of my hearing, is not it? ". Millon, then?" It was a laborious insignificance. "
It saves Edouard Balladur and Simone Veil, but not Charles Pasqua ... In 1993, he remembers that he was running for the post of defense minister. "But Balladur, assures me he did not really wanted in that department then. He distrusted. "Today, he eats all the suspicions against him, including that of having unmanned, with Jean-Charles Marchiani, then prefect of the Var in 1995, a book in which two journalists the accused of ordering the assassination of MP Yann Piat.
few weeks ago, Charles Pasqua has yet asked to testify on his behalf in his appeal of the "Angolagate. It really does not know if it will go.
And Nicolas Sarkozy? The young minister at the time might pass, but the president is doomed. Francois Leotard was written in fifteen days, in 2008, It will end badly (Grasset), a violent pamphlet against him. He has not seen for years.
But always found, at long, Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, "my brother," he said. He knows the suspicions about his former adviser in negotiating arms deals involved in the attack Karachi. When he depicts their friendship, he takes the role of the prince and let "Donnedieu" one of the aide. "I trusted him completely, without ever knowing what he did." It is "Renaud" which in the summer of 1995, worrying about her fatigue and her shortness of breath, induced him to go for a stress test. "Twenty-four hours later, m'hospitalisait for a triple bypass."
It is now ten years since Francois Leotard has broken with that past. At the time, he madly loved the excitement of combat. Today, he sometimes speaks in novels and in the chronicle that holds monthly in Corsica. He became a consultant for a large SMEs in its region, which helps the operator to enter the departments. Monday in the office of judge, he suggested to counsel for plaintiffs to meet the victims of the attack which he now denies liability on the Chirac camp. For lunch, he pulled out of the cellar of a Bordeaux wine circumstance, a Chasse-Spleen.
Raphaëlle Bacqué
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