French President Nicolas Sarkozy is dropping a lawsuit against French weekly Le Nouvel Observateur for reporting that he sent a text message to ex-wife Cecilia offering to call off his marriage, a statement by his new wife Carla Bruni said today.
Sarkozy last month had lodged the complaint against Le Nouvel Observateur for reporting he had sent a SMS to Cecilia eight days before his marriage to ex-model Bruni that said: "If you come back, I'll call it all off." The suit was filed on Sarkozy’s behalf by lawyer Thierry Herzog over a report on the newspaper’s website (nouvelobs.com) entitled “The obsession with Cecilia.”
“We welcome the announcement that President Sarkozy is withdrawing his lawsuit against Nouvel Observateur,” Reporters sans frontières (RSF) said. “We hope the lawsuit will turn out to be an isolated event that does not recur. Suing the news media is something French presidents have not done for many years.”
“The president is suing the newspaper under criminal law when he could well have brought a civil suit for violation of privacy,” RSF had then said. “Even if we trust the courts to be fair, this choice of procedure alarms us. Furthermore, a criminal prosecution means the journalist targeted could be required to reveal his sources. This would not so in a civil action.
“No French president had sued the news media for the past 30 years at least,” the press freedom organisation added. “This is another reason why the case does not bode well for relations between this government and the press. If the lawsuit strikes us as inappropriate, so does secretary of state for human rights Rama Yade’s description of journalists as ‘vultures’ in an interview on RTL. We hope she did not mean this.”
The charges brought by Sarkozy’s lawyer under article 441 of the criminal code carry a maximum sentence of three years in prison and a fine of 45,000 euros. A criminal suit by a French president is unprecedented. The suit Sarkozy brought against the low-cost airline Ryanair for using a photo of himself and Bruni in an ad without his consent was a civil action.
