Court crowded as Angola arms trafficking trial opens

THE son of a former French president and 40 other people charged with trafficking arms to war-torn Angola or taking kickbacks faced judges yesterday at the opening of a huge and long-awaited trial in Paris.

Prosecutors allege that the two key suspects – French businessman Pierre Falcone and Arkady Gaydamak, an Israeli tycoon based in France at the time – organised the sale of Russian arms to Angola from 1993 to 2000, during its civil war, for a total of about £455 million, in breach of French government rules.

The other suspects, including Jean-Christophe Mitterrand, the son of former president François Mitterrand, and other members of France's political elite, are accused of receiving money or gifts undeclared to tax authorities from a company run by Falcone in exchange for political or commercial favours.

Such was the press and public interest that proceedings were moved into a bigger hall.

Yesterday's session focused on procedural matters. All the main defendants were present except Gaydamak, who is the subject of an international arrest warrant. Gaydamak's lawyer, William Goldnagel, said his client – a candidate for mayor of Jerusalem – did not want to do prison time and planned to travel to Paris for the proceedings next month.

"My client is not a dishonest man; he's not an arms vendor," Mr Goldnagel told reporters.

Gaydamak's son, Alexandre, owns the English Premiership football club Portsmouth.

The case is sensitive for Angola. A lawyer for the country, Francis Teitgen, said yesterday he would seek to have the trial annulled "to protect the rights attached to its sovereignty".

Angola considers numerous documents used by the prosecution to be defence secrets, Mr Teitgen said.

Lawyers for Falcone and Gaydamak argue there is no reason to pursue the case in a French court because the weapons never transited French territory. But prosecutors cite the use of a French bank and French companies in the deals.

A lawyer for Jean-Christophe Mitterrand was reported in a newspaper yesterday as insisting that his client never received bribes, only payment for advising Falcone's company about Angola. Mitterrand was his father's Africa adviser in the years preceding the arms deals.

Another defendant, Charles Pasqua, a former interior minister, said in an interview on French radio that he had nothing to do with the events in question. He said the case was trumped up to thwart him from running for president in 2002. Pasqua is charged with "passive arms trafficking" and "receiving misused funds".

Pasqua, Gaydamak, Falcone and Mitterrand face a maximum of ten years in prison and thousands of euros in fines if they are convicted.

Other suspects are accused primarily of receiving misused funds – the 468-page indictment describes envelopes of cash changing hands and a shopping list of Kalashnikov rifles, land mines and tanks.

The trial is expected to last until March.