Jean-Charles Marchiani Pardoned by French President

French pardon of bribe-taker raises hackles
By VERENA VON DERSCHAU – 9 hours ago
PARIS (AP) — Among 27 prisoners granted French presidential pardons this holiday season is one with an unusual resume.
Jean-Charles Marchiani, a former secret agent, helped free French hostages in Lebanon in the 1980s and Bosnia in the 1990s, and served in the European parliament and as a governor in the south of France.
The influential conservative has also been convicted twice of taking big bribes for business contracts and is currently on trial in an international arms trafficking case. But French President Nicolas Sarkozy decided that Marchiani has paid his dues, and granted him a partial pardon this week that could see him soon free.

Sarkozy's enemies are crying foul.

"How can we talk about justice, when the same rules are not applied to everyone?" asked the leader of France's main opposition force, Socialist Martine Aubry. She noted that Sarkozy has rejected appeals for a mass early release for prisoners convicted of certain minor crimes.
Sarkozy was in Brazil all week, away from the fray.

The president's office made no direct comment about Marchiani's pardon, but issued a statement Tuesday announcing 27 partial or total pardons "motivated by acts of courage or bravery ... exhibited during or before their incarceration."

The CGT-Penitentiary prison workers' union called the gesture "scandalous." "What an act of bravery, to reside in the VIP section of the La Sante prison," the union said in a statement, referring to Marchiani, held in the La Sante prison in Paris.

Interior Minister Michele Alliot-Marie said Marchiani's "personality and past actions were certainly taken into account" in deciding the pardon.

Four former French hostages in Lebanon appealed to Sarkozy to pardon Marchiani. So did Marchiani's former boss — Charles Pasqua, an icon of France's conservative establishment facing a tangle of corruption accusations himself.

Pasqua, a former interior minister, said "there is nothing extraordinary" about Sarkozy's decision. "Let's look at the services rendered, look at the risks undertaken, the courage that he exhibited, the results he obtained in freeing the hostages," Pasqua said on RTL radio.
Marchiani, close to former President Jacques Chirac, rose to national political prominence after helping negotiate the release of three French hostages held by the pro-Iranian Islamic Jihad movement in Lebanon in 1988. They were among several foreigners, including Americans, held in Lebanon at the time.

In exchange, France agreed to restore diplomatic relations with Iran strained over the Iran-Iraq war, and paid off the last segment of a billion-dollar dispute over a nuclear energy project with Iran.

Marchiani was later accused of laundering money meant for use as a ransom for the hostages, though the French government has denied paying a ransom.

In 2005, Marchiani was convicted in two corruption cases: one for taking kickbacks in the sale of gearboxes from a German company to the French Defense Ministry for use in Leclerc tanks, and another for profiting from a contract between a Dutch firm and the Paris airports authority over the sale of conveyor belts in the 1980s. He was a government official for at least part of the period when he received the bribes.

At the time, he said, "I don't think I deserve this kind of sentence. I think I have, for 42 years, served my country in dignity." He said he didn't regret anything he had done and would do it again.

The court disagreed. It said Marchiani "gave France the image of a country where corruption allows one to buy public decision-makers without difficulty."

Marchiani, 65, was notified Tuesday that his sentence was reduced by six months. Since he has already served 13 months of a three-year sentence, the partial pardon means he is now eligible to request conditional release.

Even if Marchiani leaves prison soon, he won't be free of legal woes.
He and his former boss Pasqua are among 42 people on trial in a tangled case of alleged arms trafficking to Angola. The trial began in October and is expected to last until March

Article @ The AP