Posted on 02/05/2004 12:35:34 PM PST by jempet
February 5, 2004, 12:59 PM EST PARIS -- President Jacques Chirac was on the firing line Thursday for creating his own panel to probe allegations that judges who convicted a close political ally in a party financing scandal came under pressure before the verdict. Chirac bypassed the body charged with assuring the judiciary's independence and instead named a special commission to investigate the case that grew out of former Prime Minister Alain Juppe's trial and conviction. "It's a veritable twisting of a state of law," said Dominique Rousseau, a member of the High Council for the Magistrature, or CSM, speaking to the daily Le Monde. The French constitution calls for the CSM to investigate irregularities in the judicial system. Juppe, a leading political figure in France, was found guilty last Friday of a leading role in a scheme to fill the coffers of Chirac's conservative party when both men served at Paris City Hall. Juppe was given an 18-month suspended prison sentence and banned from holding political office for a decade -- a sentence suspended by his appeal. Juppe is a lawmaker and mayor of Bordeaux. Meanwhile, the presiding judge in the Juppe case, Catherine Pierce, claimed that she and her two colleagues had been threatened and harassed before they issued the verdict. A criminal investigation was opened in Nanterre, the Paris suburb where the trial was held. However, Chirac quickly named a three-judge panel to carry out its own investigation. Parliament also opened an inquiry -- and drew criticism from opposition Socialists who said the legislature had no business meddling in an affair that clearly falls within the judicial branch's domain. Chirac served as Paris mayor from 1977 to 1995, and there had been efforts to question him in the Juppe case, in which city funds were used to pay personnel of Chirac's Rally for the Republic Party, now known as the UMP.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsday.com ...
Wow. That's almost as bad as a President appointing the people who will sit on a panel to see if he cooked the intelligence prior to invading another country.
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