Angola wants trial scrapped
2008-10-06 14:36
Paris - Angola will ask a French court to scrap the trial opening later on Monday of 42 politicians, businessmen and other public figures accused in the arms-to-Angola scandal of the 1990s, its lawyer said.
Angola will invoke French confidentiality laws allowing third countries to defend their military secrets to argue that the trial be aborted, said Francis Teitgen, representing the Luanda government.
Late French president Francois Mitterrand's son Jean-Christophe, former interior minister Charles Pasqua and Israeli-Russian billionaire Arcady Gaydamak are among the 42 accused of illegal arms sales to Angola in the 1990s.
Judges accuse Angola's President Eduardo Dos Santos of asking Gaydamak and French businessman Pierre Falcone for weapons shipments after France refused to sell him a shipment of tanks in violation of a UN arms embargo.
The two are accused of acting as go-betweens for illegal arms deliveries from eastern Europe with several high-profile French officials allegedly receiving kickbacks.
In a statement to the court obtained by AFP, Angola said that "its rights as a sovereign state have been violated since the beginning of this case".
The trial centres on the trafficking of $790m in arms to the southern African country from 1993 to 1998, at the height of a war pitting Dos Santos' troops against Jonas Savimbi's Unita rebels.
- AFP