Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy has been taken into police custody for questioning over allegations that he received funding from the regime of the late Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi for the 2007 presidential election campaign.

Sarkozy, 63, was summoned to a police station in Nanterre and was being questioned in relation to “irregularities” over the financing of his 2007 campaign that swept him to power for a single five-year term, Le Monde daily reported citing court sources.

An inquiry was opened in April 2013 into allegations that Sarkozy’s campaign had benefited from illicit funds from Gaddafi but it was the first time that he is being questioned over the matter. He has denied any wrongdoing.

The development came several weeks after a former associate, Alexandre Djouhri, was arrested in London and later released on bail. One of Sarkozy’s former ministers and a close ally, Brice Hortefeux, was also being questioned on Tuesday, the BBC reported.

The former President can be held by police for up to 48 hours before facing magistrates.

French law bans candidates from receiving cash payments above 6,300 pounds, but the massive donation is said to have been laundered through bank accounts in Panama and Switzerland.

A document made public in Paris apparently showed that the French leader and the former Libyan dictator made an illegal financial deal, reports say.

Written in Arabic and signed by Mussa Kussa, Gaddafi’s intelligence chief, in 2006, it referred to an “agreement in principle to support the campaign for Sarkozy for a sum equivalent to 50 million euro”.

A bundle of evidence was originally leaked by senior members of Libya’s National Transitional Council to French investigative news site Mediapart, according to a Daily Mail report.

A governmental briefing note among papers sent to Mediapart pointed to numerous visits to Libya by Sarkozy and his colleagues which were aimed at securing funding, it said.

(IANS)

A small plane crash-landed on a house shortly after it took off from Plaridel airstrip in Bulacan province of Manila on Saturday, killing seven, authorities said.

The Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP) said all six people, including the two pilots aboard the six-seater twin-engined Piper PA-23 Apache plane, were killed.

Police said the plane landed on a house and erupted in flames. A resident of the house was also killed, Xinhua reported.

CAAP spokesman Eric Apolonio said the plane, operated by Lite Express, crashed in a residential area a few minutes after it took off at 11.21 a.m. It was reportedly bound for Laoag City in Ilocos Norter province.

At least six persons have been killed after a footbridge collapsed near Florida International University in Miami, crushing eight vehicles and leaving rescue workers racing to free victims from chunks of concrete and snapped metal.

At least nine survivors were taken to hospitals, a Fire Department official said. Vehicles had stopped at a red light when the bridge, which weighed more than 950 tonnes, crashed down on the busy road on Thursday, the Washington Post reported on Friday.

“The most important thing we can do right now is pray for the individuals who ended up in the hospital, for their full recovery, and pray for the family members who lost loved ones,” Florida Governor Rick Scott said.

The bridge was erected on Saturday in just six hours. It was built using a method called “accelerated bridge construction” to avoid traffic disruption. A major section of the bridge was assembled on the side of the road and then raised into place.

President Donald Trump tweeted on Thursday night he was monitoring “the heartbreaking bridge collapse”.

“Continuing to monitor the heartbreaking bridge collapse at FIU – so tragic. Many brave First Responders rushed in to save lives. Thank you for your courage. Praying for all who are affected,” he tweeted.

“I heard what sounded to me like a sonic boom from an aircraft which shook the ground below,” said Kurt Baker, a student at the university who had just exited the Florida Turnpike.

“There was a large plume of smoke,” said Adrian Mesa of the Sweetwater Police Department. “And then you could see the south end of the bridge was tilted over.”

The bridge was designed to connect the city of Sweetwater with the campus of Florida International University and to make it safer for students to cross the frenetic roadway.

“It was going to be a significant project,” Senator Marco Rubio said. “To see it on the ground and underneath it those who died and who were injured is a tragedy.”

He said the cause of the collapse will be fully investigated.

“The victims and their families deserve to know what went wrong. There will be an extraordinary review into what the errors were and what led to this catastrophic collapse,” Rubio said.

(IANS)

March 15 (IANS) BY NASHEMAN

Pakistan has called back its High Commissioner in New Delhi, Sohail Mahmood, for consultation to Islamabad over incidents of “harassing” of its Embassy’s staff in the Indian capital, the Foreign Office stated on Thursday.

Speaking at his weekly press briefing, Pakistan’s Foreign Office spokesperson Mohammad Faisal said they will hold consultations with the High Commissioner over “recent incidents of harassing of their diplomats”.

Faisal claimed that the Indian government had not taken measures to safeguard Pakistani diplomats and their families in India, adding that the Pakistani government lodged protests over the matter with the Indian deputy High Commissioner as well as India’s External Affairs Ministry.

The Pakistani Ministry of Foreign Affairs in a statement said its “staff and their families had been facing harassment, intimidation and outright violence from Indian state agencies in recent weeks in New Delhi”.

It claimed that its Deputy High Commissioner’s car was chased and his driver was abused by a group of men in the Indian capital last week.

Responding to complaints by Islamabad, New Delhi assured last week that “India makes all efforts to provide a safe and secure environment for diplomats to work in”. It added the Indian officials had also faced “harassment” last year in Pakistan but they chose to deal with it through “quiet and persistent diplomacy”.