U of A researchers discover screen time surprise under grandparents' care

University of Arizona

Facebook

BlueskyMessageWhatsApp\Email

When Grandma and Grandpa are in charge, the children are likely staring at a screen – a long-standing parental complaint now supported by University of Arizona research. 

Previous studies have examined how grandparents from other countries oversee children's screen time, but new research published in the Journal of Children and Media found that nearly half of the time American children spend with their grandparents involves interacting with or watching media on a screen.

By focusing on the unique and expanding role of grandparents as caregivers, a growing interpersonal dynamic that can influence media habits and family relationships is uncovered, said lead study author Cecilia Sada Garibay.

"I am the mother of four kids, and my mother has always helped me take care of them," said Sada Garibay, a graduate student studying communication in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences. "I noticed that my children used media differently when they were with her than when they were with me, and my friends with children noticed the same thing. Through our research, we discovered that media consumption is not only important for grandchildren, but that understanding media is just as important for grandparents. Grandparents may want to watch along with their grandchildren or just want to understand what the children are watching."

Alongside Matthew Lapierre, associate professor of communication, Sada Garibay surveyed 350 grandparents living in the U.S. about the time they spend with their grandchildren and the strategies they use to manage media consumption. 

Participants were grandparents – but not the primary caregivers – of children between 2 and 10 years old, who they supervised at least three times a month. Of the 350 participants, 178 grandfathers and 172 grandmothers were selected, with an average age of 55. The average age of the 350 corresponding grandchildren was 5 years old. 

Survey participants also reported on their living situations: roughly 35% never live with their grandchild and family, 25% live with family a few weeks a year, 6% reported fewer than six month a year, while 8% lived with their family at least half the year – and 10% for the entire year.

Participants were asked about the last time they cared for their grandchild, and how many hours the child spent using media. That included watching TV, movies or other videos on a television set, using computers or handheld devices, playing video games or using the internet or apps on a device.

The grandparents were also asked what strategies they used to oversee their grandchildren when using media: supervisory, instructive, restrictive or co-using.

"Supervision involves keeping an eye on what your grandchild is doing, and the media they watch," Sada Garibay said. "Being instructive means explaining the content of something to your grandchild, while restrictive actions involve limiting the amount of time a child can use technology – or what content they are allowed to view. Co-using means watching media alongside your grandchild."

In addition to examining children's media consumption and grandparents' mediation strategies, Sada Garibay and Lapierre asked participants to rate their digital skills on a four-point scale. Participants also shared their perspectives on what they believe are the positive and negative impacts of media consumption and described the severity of any media-related disagreements they have with their grandchild's parents.

Digital divide

When the participants last cared for their grandchild, they reported spending an average of seven hours with that child – who in turn spent nearly half that time consuming media. The study found that children spend about two hours watching TV, and another hour playing videogames or using the internet on a device.

The survey participants employ a variety of mediation techniques, Sada Garibay said. Monitoring what their grandchildren watch was most common, followed by restricting media time or engaging in deeper discussion. Grandparents least often participated in viewing or playing alongside their grandchildren.

The study results showed that grandparents were more likely to use or watch media alongside younger grandchildren, if they themselves were younger or better understood technology. Grandparents less familiar with technology were more likely to restrict what their grandchild could watch, while younger or more technologically savvy grandparents were more likely to instead talk with their grandchild about the dangers of media and what to watch. 

The results also indicated that grandfathers are less likely to supervise their grandchildren than grandmothers, though technological know-how led to increased supervision for all grandparents.

Sada Garibay and Lapierre also found that grandparents with negative beliefs about media were significantly more likely to disagree with their adult child about media use – while positive beliefs about media were not significantly related to media disagreements with their adult child. Positive attitudes toward media were associated with higher relationship satisfaction, while increased media-related disagreement was associated with lower relationship satisfaction.

Overall, Sada Garibay said the study showed that consuming media is not only a significant part of American children's daily routines, but that grandparents approach handling these situations differently for a variety of reasons. 

"I think our most significant result was that a grandparent's level of confidence with technology was a significant predictor of the kinds of mediation strategies they use," Sada Garibay said. "The more confident a grandparent felt about media and technology, the more they were able to interact with their grandchildren's media. Grandparents with more of those skills were able to do significantly better with their grandchildren than those who don't have those skills. If grandparents can gain those technological skills, then they have better tools to manage their grandchildren's media use."

---

Journal

Journal of Children and Media

DOI

10.1080/17482798.2025.2480088 

Method of Research

Survey

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Grandparents and children’s media use in the USA: Screen time, mediation practices, and relationship outcomes

Article Publication Date

16-Apr-2025

 

Texas A&M AgriLife wildlife data supports global research of wildlife diel activity patterns April 17, 2025 -  by Sarah Fuller Texas A&M AgriLife Communications Historical beliefs of mammals’ daily activity periods may not hold true — especially in regions seeing increased human development, according to a global study. Camera trap data collected by a Texas A&M AgriLife researcher contributed to one of the largest global studies of mammal behavior to date. Their findings indicate that long-held assumptions surrounding daily activity periods for wildlife may not be accurate. (Sam Craft/Texas A&M AgriLife) Camera trap data collected by a Texas A&M AgriLife researcher helped power one of the largest global studies of mammal behavior to date — analyzing more than 8.9 million images across 445 species in 38 countries. Published in Science Advances, the study found that many species do not stick to a single daily rhythm, contradicting decades of scientific assumptions. These findings reveal the flexibility of wildlife and signal the need for a new framework to understand animal activity in a rapidly changing world. What is diel activity? Mammals’ daily schedules — how wildlife activity is spread over a 24-hour cycle based on light availability — are grouped into four categories known as a diel phenotypes, said Humberto Perotto, Ph.D., associate professor and Joan Negley Kelleher Endowed Professor in Ranch Management in the Texas A&M Department of Rangeland, Wildlife and Fisheries Management. Diurnal animals are most active during the day. Nocturnal animals are most active at night. Crepuscular species are typically active during the dawn and dusk. Cathemeral animals show irregular activity throughout the day and night.  Research born out of curiosity and anecdotal data Perotto said researchers have long suspected wildlife species weren’t restricted to these specific four categories, especially with the advent of new technology like GPS collars used to collect regular animal movement data. “Our argument was largely based on anecdotal evidence, but this research project truly quantifies that wildlife species don’t fit specifically within these parameters, and our changing environment influences their activity,” Perotto said.   Perotto first learned of the project, led by researchers at the University of Rhode Island, while studying Rio Grande wild turkey in the Edwards Plateau. “We had close to 56 camera traps set for our work, so we were collecting a lot of data not just on turkeys, but any number of wildlife that happened to pass through,” Perotto said. After conversations with the project team in Rhode Island, Perotto and his students began reviewing their extensive data set and contributing to the Global Animal Diel Activity Project. Surprising insights about mammals’ behavior The lead researchers analyzed the vast data set based on species, location, daylight length and geography and then compared their findings to published research indicating a species’ diel phenotype. Of the 445 species documented, the analysis found that only 39% of the established diel phenotypes were accurate, and that species commonly use more than one diel classification. “The most striking thing is that when you are taught an animal is diurnal or is nocturnal, that is not always correct,” said Brian Gerber, Ph.D., former University of Rhode Island research ecologist and project co-author. “Many terrestrial mammals will be diurnal sometimes and nocturnal or cathemeral other times. When you see a nocturnal species during the day, this is perhaps not as unusual as you might think.” Factors like body size, location and human presence were all found to shape diel activity patterns. Human impacts shift animal behavior patterns One of the clear trends found: Mammals in North America became more nocturnal in areas with higher human development. “As we humans develop land and encroach into wildlife habitat, this land-use change causes new behaviors in wildlife,” Perotto said. These changes may not always be harmless. For example, a species that typically forages during the daytime hours may have less success in finding food if they transition to more nocturnal behavior to avoid humans. Conservation and management implications Perotto said understanding these shifts is crucial for managing wildlife in a human-altered landscape. “Further research is needed to better understand these implications and identify ways to mitigate potentially negative impacts,” he said. “Studies like this are advancing science and helping us understand how our changing world affects the rhythms of the natural world.”   -30-   Would you like more information from Texas A&M AgriLife? Visit AgriLife Today, the news hub for Texas A&M AgriLife, which brings together a college and four state agencies focused on agriculture and life sciences within The Texas A&M University System, or sign up for our Texas A&M AgriLife E-Newsletter. For more resources including photo repository, logo downloads and style guidelines, please visit the Resources for Press and Media.

---

Journal

Science Advances

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.ado384 

Lake deposits reveal directional shaking during devastating 1976 Guatemala earthquake

Seismological Society of America

Facebook

XLinkedInWeChatBlueskyMessageWhatsAppEmail

 

image: 

Lake sediment core showing the background sedimentation in the lake (laminations) and the disruption generated by a turbidite (light gray layer with no internal structure). 

view more 

Credit: Jonathan Obrist-Farner

Sediment cores drawn from four lakes in Guatemala record the distinct direction that ground shaking traveled during a 1976 magnitude 7.5 earthquake that devastated the country, according to researchers at the Seismological Society of America’s Annual Meeting.

The earthquake, which killed more than 23,000 people and left about 1.5 million people homeless, took place along the Motagua Fault, at the boundary between the North American and Caribbean tectonic plate boundary.

Severe ground shaking from the 1976 earthquake caused landslides and sediment-laden turbidity currents that can be seen clearly in cores taken from the lakebeds. Normally, researchers might expect that this shaking would produce the thinnest sediment deposits in lakes furthest away from an earthquake, since seismic waves weaken as they travel away from an earthquake epicenter.

But in the Guatemalan lakes, the cores with the thickest sediment traces of the earthquake occur at the end of the fault rupture, said Jonathan Obrist-Farner, a geologist at Missouri University of Science and Technology. “What we see is lakes that are actually the closest to the epicenter but just away from the rupture path have very thin deposits.”

Jeremy Maurer, a geophysicist also at Missouri University, suggested that the unusual pattern had in this case recorded the directivity of the 1976 shaking.

It’s not unusual for scientists to find evidence of past earthquakes in lake sediment cores, Maurer added, noting examples from New Zealand to Turkey that offer a glimpse at how far away a particular earthquake could have an impact.

“What hasn’t been done as much is looking at where these lakes are located in relationship to the fault,” said Maurer. “Are they off-axis or on-axis? Does the direction of the rupture have an effect on sediment deposits?”

When the U.S. Geological Survey collected field data after the 1976 earthquake, “they found, for example, adobe houses that were 10 kilometers south of the main rupture path that were still standing, yet those that were actually on the fault trace and towards the propagation direction all collapsed,” said Maurer. “I think there’s a lot of evidence that points to the directivity of the rupture and now we’re just looking at it sedimentologically from the lakes.”

The researchers began recovering and analyzing cores from the lakes in 2022. “We thought it would be a very interesting opportunity to not just look at the 1976 earthquake, but actually learn a little bit more about the paleoseismic history of the plate boundary, which we know very little of,” said Obrist-Farner, who is originally from Guatemala.

Although there was a brief rush of seismologists to the region after the 1976 earthquake, the impacts of a 36-year civil war and sparse instrumentation have left the plate boundary poorly monitored. Paleoseismic data like the lake records are important for building a more complete picture of the country’s seismic risk.

Last year Obrist-Farner’s team retrieved their largest cores yet from the lakes, with lengths of sediment that may represent up to four thousand years of lake history. Their initial analysis shows evidence of the 1816 earthquake of at least magnitude 7.5 that is known mostly from historical documents.

Native American names extend the earthquake history of northeastern North America

Seismological Society of America

Facebook

XLinkedInWeChatBlueskyMessageWhatsAppEmail

In 1638, an earthquake in what is now New Hampshire had Plymouth, Massachusetts colonists stumbling from the strong shaking and water sloshing out of the pots used by Native Americans to cook a midday meal along the St. Lawrence River, according to contemporaneous reports.

When Roger Williams, founder of the Rhode Island colony, talked with local Native Americans, he reported that the younger tribe members were surprised by the earthquake. But older tribe members said they had felt similar shaking four times in the past 80 years.

In his talk at the Seismological Society of America’s Annual Meeting, Boston College seismologist John Ebel urged his colleagues to collect more information about past earthquakes in eastern North American from Native American stories and languages.

Although it might not feel like earthquake country to a Californian, for example, northeastern North America experiences regular seismic activity and has hosted large earthquakes in the past. Written records of these earthquakes include the past 400 years, but Ebel said extending this record further into the past with the help of Native American knowledge can help scientists better understand earthquake hazard in the area.

Sometimes the clues to past seismic activity are in Native American place names, Ebel said. There’s Moodus, Connecticut, for instance. Moodus comes from an Algonquin dialect and means “place of noises.” For hundreds of years, people have heard “booms”—as if echoing in an underground cavern—in the area. Ebel said the Moodus noises are similar those he heard as a graduate student camping in the Mojave Desert following a magnitude 5.1 earthquake.

“The Moodus noises sounded like distant thunder of a boom coming up from the ground, very similar to what I heard from the California aftershocks several years before,” said Ebel, who noted that modern seismic instruments have recorded earthquake swarms in Moodus. “So the ‘place of noises’ means that they were hearing earthquakes long before Europeans came to that locality.”

Then there’s the regular small earthquake activity in the northwest suburbs of Boston, where Ebel and his colleagues have been monitoring since the mid-1970s. “I was going through books one day looking for information on historical earthquakes there, and I come across this WPA guide from the 1930s, and it's talking about Route 2, which runs right through that area, and it goes right near a hill called Mount Nashoba,” he recalled.

The guide included “a little translation that said Nashoba is from an Indian word that means ‘hill that shakes.’ So now I've got all of these little earthquakes, and right in the center of it is a place with an ancient name that means hill that shakes,” Ebel said.

Researching which tribes in the region have a word for earthquake could be useful, “because that would suggest that earthquakes were a rather repetitive thing,” he noted. His early searches indicate that the Seneca, Cayuga, Natick and Mi’kmaq tribes all have a word for earthquake.

Ebel said interdisciplinary research with ethnologists with more detailed knowledge about Native American languages and narratives could be very helpful to seismologists looking to extend the northeastern North America earthquake record into pre-colonial times. “If there are legends that preserve information about probable earthquakes, for instance, it might be possible to define some sort of estimate of [shaking] intensity from the descriptions in the stories,” he suggested.

How wide are faults?

Seismological Society of America

FacebookX

LinkedInWeChatBlueskyMessageWhatsAppEmail

At the Seismological Society of America’s Annual Meeting, researchers posed a seemingly simple question: how wide are faults?

Using data compiled from single earthquakes across the world, Christie Rowe of the Nevada Seismological Laboratory at the University of Nevada, Reno and Alex Hatem of the U.S. Geological Survey sought a more comprehensive answer, one that considers both surface and deep traces of seismic rupture and creep.

By compiling observations of recent earthquakes, Rowe and Hatem conclude that from Turkey to California, it’s not just a single strand of a fault but quite often a branching network of fault strands involved in an earthquake, making the fault zone hundreds of meters wide.

“So that suggests that significant parts of the broad array of fractures that develops over many earthquakes can be activated in a single earthquake,” said Rowe, who noted that this width sometimes roughly corresponds to the width of Alquist-Priolo zones established for safe building in California.

“We want to know how this might change things like the shaking patterns that you would expect, or how much radiated energy you get from an earthquake,” Rowe explained. “Because it’s not the same if you have slip distributed on many strands as when it is all on one strand of the fault.”

At the same time, the researchers found that the width of creep zones at these earthquakes are much narrower, both near the surface and 10-25 kilometers deep in the earth. The creep zones, between 2 and 10 meters wide, “may be the most localized behavior a fault does,” Rowe said.

The study emphasizes the importance of thinking of faults in a more three-dimensional manner, said Rowe.

“As a geologist, it's always kind of been a cognitive disconnect for me when I talk to earthquake modelers who have these two-dimensional features that they model earthquakes on,” she said. “Because the sheer resistance, the strength or the friction, comes from a volume of rock that's deforming during an earthquake or in between earthquakes. So the size of that volume controls the strength of the fault in some really tangible ways.”

The researchers used a variety of data in their study, including rupture maps, creeping zone width from surveys of slowly shifting monuments along faults and satellite observations, the locations of earthquake aftershocks, low velocity damage zone widths, and the zones delineated by certain types of rock such as pseudotachylyte, ultramylonite and mylonite that are a signature of creep and deformation.

The findings also have implications for how scientists study past earthquakes to calculate earthquake recurrence intervals on faults, Rowe noted.

Slip rates and recurrence intervals can be constrained using localized measurements, but it can be difficult to disentangle the slip that occurred during an earthquake and aseismic slip that occurred after the event. The 2014 Napa, California earthquake is a good example of this phenomenon, said Rowe, noting that almost half of the slip measured after that event occurred slowly after the earthquake.

But if the Napa earthquake occurred thousands of years ago and researchers came across its traces in the rock record, “you would just see a bigger earthquake. You might lump all of that slip as a single event,” Rowe said.

Creep isn’t always accounted for in calculating recurrence intervals, “so finding out that creep zones are quite narrow means that we should be aware that we could be convolving creep with seismic slip when we look at those paleoseismic records,” she added.

 SPACE/COSMOS

New study unveils volcanic history and clues to ancient life on Mars

The proof may be in the pudding, but according to a Texas A&M University geologist, when it comes to ancient life on the Red Planet, the proof is in the rocks.

Texas A&M University

Facebook

XLinkedInWeChatBlueskyMessageWhatsAppEmail

 

image: 

A mosaic of two pictures showing the rover arm after scanning and sampling one of the rocks discussed in the paper. The rock itself is in the lower right and clearly shows the hole where the sample was collected. The rock was given the informal name "Rochette" by the Perseverance science team.

view more 

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU

In a groundbreaking study co-authored by a Texas A&M University scientist, researchers have revealed new insights into the geological history of Mars' Jezero Crater, the landing site of NASA’s Perseverance rover. Their findings suggest that the crater's floor is composed of a diverse array of iron-rich volcanic rocks, providing a window into the planet’s distant past and the closest chance yet to uncover signs of ancient life.

Research scientist Dr. Michael Tice, who studies geobiology and sedimentary geology in the Texas A&M College of Arts and Sciences, is part of an international team exploring the surface of Mars. He and his co-authors published their findings in Science Advances.

“By analyzing these diverse volcanic rocks, we’ve gained valuable insights into the processes that shaped this region of Mars,” Tice said. “This enhances our understanding of the planet’s geological history and its potential to have supported life.”

Unlocking Mars’ Secrets With Unrivaled Technology

Perseverance, NASA’s most advanced robotic explorer, landed in the Jezero Crater on Feb. 18, 2021, as part of the Mars 2020 mission’s search for signs of ancient microbial life on the Red Planet. The rover is collecting core samples of Martian rock and regolith (broken rock and soil) for possible future analysis on Earth.

Meanwhile, scientists like Tice are using the rover’s high-tech tools to analyze Martian rocks to determine their chemical composition and detect compounds that could be signs of past life. The rover also has a high-resolution camera system that provides detailed images of rock texture and structures. But Tice said the technology is so advanced compared to that of past NASA rovers that they are gathering new information at unprecedented levels.

"We’re not just looking at pictures — we’re getting detailed chemical data, mineral compositions and even microscopic textures,” Tice said. “It’s like having a mobile lab on another planet."

Tice and his co-authors analyzed the rock formations within the crater to better understand Mars' volcanic and hydrological history. The team used the Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry (PIXL), an advanced spectrometer, to analyze the chemical composition and textures of rocks in the Máaz formation, a key geological area within Jezero Crater. PIXL’s high-resolution X-ray capabilities allow for unprecedented detail in studying the elements in the rocks.

Tice noted the importance of the technology in revolutionizing Martian exploration. “Every rover that has ever gone to Mars has been a technological marvel, but this is the first time we’ve been able to analyze rocks in such high resolution using X-ray fluorescence. It has completely changed the way we think about the history of rocks on Mars,” he said.

What The Rocks Reveal

The team’s analysis revealed two distinct types of volcanic rocks. The first type, dark-toned and rich in iron and magnesium, contains intergrown minerals such as pyroxene and plagioclase feldspar, with evidence of altered olivine. The second type, a lighter-toned rock classified as trachy-andesite, includes plagioclase crystals within a potassium-rich groundmass. These findings indicate a complex volcanic history involving multiple lava flows with varying compositions.

To determine how these rocks formed, researchers conducted thermodynamic modeling — a method that simulates the conditions under which the minerals solidified. Their results suggest that the unique compositions resulted from high-degree fractional crystallization, a process where different minerals separate from molten rock as it cools. They also found signs that the lava may have mixed with iron-rich material from Mars' crust, changing the rocks' composition even more.

“The processes we see here — fractional crystallization and crustal assimilation — happen in active volcanic systems on Earth,” said Tice. “It suggests that this part of Mars may have had prolonged volcanic activity, which in turn could have provided a sustained source for different compounds used by life.”

This discovery is crucial for understanding Mars' potential habitability. If Mars had an active volcanic system for an extended period, it might have also maintained conditions suitable for life for long portions of Mars’ early history.

“We’ve carefully selected these rocks because they contain clues to Mars’ past environments,” Tice said. “When we get them back to Earth and can analyze them with laboratory instruments, we’ll be able to ask much more detailed questions about their history and potential biological signatures.”

The Mars Sample Return mission, a collaborative effort between NASA and the European Space Agency, aims to bring the samples back within the next decade. Once on Earth, scientists will have access to more advanced laboratory techniques to analyze them in greater detail.

Tice said that given the astounding level of technology on Perseverance, more discoveries are ahead. “Some of the most exciting work is still ahead of us. This study is just the beginning. We're seeing things that we never expected, and I think in the next few years, we’ll be able to refine our understanding of Mars’ geological history in ways we never imagined.”

Read more about the Perseverance rover and learn about the Texas A&M Department of Geology and Geophysics.

Tice’s co-authors on the study are:

• Mariek E. Schmidt and Tanya V. Kizovski, Brock University
• Yang Liu, Abigail C. Allwood, Morgan L. Cable, and Christopher M. Heirwegh, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
• Juan D. Hernandez-Montenegro, California Institute of Technology
• Anastasia Yanchilina, Impossible Sensing, Inc.
• Joel A. Hurowitz, Stony Brook University
• Allan H. Treiman, Lunar and Planetary Institute
• David A. Klevang and Jesper Henneke, Danish Technical University
• Nicholas J. Tosca, University of Cambridge
• Scott J. VanBommel, Washington University in St. Louis
• Richard V. Morris and Justin I. Simon, NASA Johnson Space Center

By Lesley Henton, Texas A&M University Division of Marketing and Communications

###

---

Journal

Science Advances

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.adr2613 

Article Title

Diverse and highly differentiated lava suite in Jezero crater, Mars: Constraints on intracrustal magmatism revealed by Mars 2020 PIXL

Article Publication Date

16-Apr-2025

How former French president Sarkozy allegedly received millions from Libya's Gaddafi

Explainer

The trial of former French president Nicolas Sarkozy came to a close this week, ending three months of exhaustive examination of allegations that the right-wing politician had struck a bargain with Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi to finance his 2007 bid for office. It’s a story with all the makings of a seedy spy thriller – and one that won’t reach its conclusion until September.


Issued on: 10/04/2025 
By: Paul MILLAR

Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy (C) shakes hands with a French police officer as he arrives with his wife Carla Bruni (L) for the last day of his trial on charges of illegal campaign financing from Libya for his successful 2007 presidential bid, at the Tribunal de Paris courthouse in Paris, on April 8, 2025. © Elsa Rancel, AFP

If any criminal trial needed an hour-and-forty-three-minute film breaking down the case in patient and painstaking detail, it was this one. Two days after the trial of France’s former right-wing president Nicolas Sarkozy opened in January this year, the allegations were already being untangled in cinemas across the country with the release of a documentary co-produced by French investigative outlet Mediapart, “Personne n’y comprend rien” – Nobody Understands Anything.

With the trial coming to a close this week, the picture is starting to become clearer. Sarkozy has been accused of having sealed a “corruption pact” with the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi that allegedly poured tens of millions of euros into financing Sarkozy’s successful bid for the nation’s highest office in 2007.

If found guilty, Sarkozy – already the first former French head of state to wear an ankle monitor in connection to an earlier, and unrelated, conviction for influence-peddling – is facing seven years in prison, a fine of 300,000 euros and a five-year ban from running for public office.

The three judges have a great deal of work ahead of them. The files that they will have to examine fill some 70 volumes. In those pages, the prosecution has painted a picture of wide-reaching corruption that, if proven, would show that the leader of the oil-rich state had poured millions into Sarkozy’s presidential campaign in exchange for the future head-of-state’s full backing in bringing the internationally isolated regime back into the brotherhood of nations.

Sarkozy has flatly denied the allegations against him, and his defence team has insisted that for all its talk of illicit millions, the prosecution has been unable to produce direct evidence of the funds in question. The trial involves 11 other defendants, including three former ministers. The court will rule on the case on September 25.
If Sarkozy were to be convicted and imprisoned, 'it would have huge political repercussions'

11:04© France 24



Where to begin? A former Libyan oil minister found drowned in the Danube, a lavish Bedouin tent rising in the shadow of the Élysée Palace, a Parisian bank vault the height of a man allegedly empty but for Sarkozy’s campaign speeches – it’s a case that at times seems more fit for a Hollywood screenplay than the pages of a legal dossier.

For the family members of the victims of twin terrorist attacks believed to have been sponsored by the Gaddafi regime, the story begins in flames. In 1988, a bomb planted on a Pan Am flight exploded in the skies above the town of Lockerbie in Scotland, killing 270 people from almost two dozen countries.

The next year, a suitcase bomb smuggled onto a plane flying over Niger killed 170 people, including 54 French nationals. French and US investigations declared the attacks to have been sponsored by the Libyan government. The attacks cemented Libya’s status as a pariah state in the eyes of the Western world, with the UN imposing widespread sanctions on Gaddafi’s government following his refusal to hand over two Libyan nationals implicated in the Lockerbie bombing.

Read moreGaddafi’s son Saif doubles down on Sarkozy funding claim, alleges pressure to retract

The family members of a handful of the people killed in the sky over Niger appeared at Sarkozy’s trial in January as civil parties, testifying to the sense of “betrayal” and “contempt” that they felt upon hearing the allegations that the former president’s close associates had met with Libyan head of military intelligence Abdullah al-Senussi, Gaddafi’s brother-in-law and the alleged mastermind behind the attack.

Testifying at Sarkozy’s trial, Nicoletta Diasio, whose father was killed in the bombing, said she was asking herself if the memory of those who were killed in the bombing could have been used as bargaining chips during those discussions.

“What did they do with our dead?” she asked.

'Trapped'

This, at least, is the case that prosecutors are making: that in October 2005, Claude Guéant, who worked as Sarkozy’s chief of staff during his time as interior minister, was introduced to Senussi in Libya by French-Lebanese arms dealer Ziad Takieddine. Over the course of a dinner, the prosecutors allege, the two men struck a bargain in which Sarkozy would lift the arrest warrant targeting the spy chief – he’d been sentenced in absentia to life in prison by a French court in connection to the Niger bombing – and push for closer diplomatic and economic ties between the two countries.

Then, in December, prosecutors alleged, it was the turn of Sarkozy’s close friend and political ally Brice Hortefeux to meet Gaddafi’s brother-in-law. Leaving a dinner in his honour early – and his security detail – Hortefeux met with Senussi at the spy chief’s house in Tripoli, with Takieddine translating. At this meeting, prosecutors say, the junior minister provided Senussi with a bank account number that would allow Gaddafi and his clan to hold up their end of the bargain.

Both Guéant and Hortefeux have maintained that they had been “trapped” into surprise meetings with Senussi, and that they told no one about it – not the French embassy in Libya, nor the French government, and certainly not Sarkozy. Both men have fiercely denied having agreed to have Senussi’s arrest warrant lifted in return for campaign funding. When pressed on what he’d discussed over his intimate dinner with Senussi, Guéant said that the two men had “chatted”.

'Gaddafi couldn't have done this alone': Seized documents reveal extensive deals with US, UK, France  14:50

The personal diary of Chukri Ghanem, Gaddafi’s former oil minister, has been more eloquent. Found in his son-in-law’s house in Vienna after Ghanem’s drowned body was fished out of the Danube, the notebook explicitly spells out separate payments made by Senussi and Gaddafi’s associates to Gaddafi to Sarkozy – adding up to millions of euros in total. The payments appear to match transfers made to Takieddine’s bank account in Geneva.

Senussi, who is currently imprisoned in Libya on war crime charges, told French investigating judges that Sarkozy’s campaign had received millions from the Gaddafi regime.

Takieddine, for his part, said that he personally and repeatedly brought suitcases packed with millions of euros from Senussi to Sarkozy and Guéant – up to 5 million all told. The defence maintains that Takieddine used the Libyan regime’s money to finance his lavish Paris lifestyle.

Takieddine in 2020 abruptly recanted his previous confessions, leading to allegations that Sarkozy and his associates had bought the arms dealer off. Both Sarkozy and his wife Carla Bruni-Sarkozy are being investigated, alongside a dozen other figures, for suspected involvement in Takieddine’s sudden change of heart.
Broken trust

For most French people, the story starts a little later – with Gaddafi’s lavish visit to Paris in December 2007, just weeks into Sarkozy’s first – and only – term in office. Having declared his willingness to dismantle his nuclear weapons programme and pay compensation to the victims of the two plane bombings, the Libyan leader was sloughing off the sanctions that had dogged him for decades and deepening ties with the West.

Sarkozy was one of the first to welcome Gaddafi with open arms, inviting the flamboyant leader to quite literally pitch his tent in the grounds of the guest residence near Paris’s Élysée Palace – a sprawling, heated pavilion inspired by Libya’s traditionally nomadic Bedouin people.

The burgeoning friendship would prove short-lived. In 2011, Libya was swept up in the wave of popular uprisings that swept the Arab world. As Gaddafi moved to violently suppress the protests, Sarkozy quickly lent his support to the rebel groups, calling for NATO to intervene. Broken by Western bombs, Gaddafi’s regime collapsed, and the leader himself was lynched in the street by rebel groups. Soon, Sarkozy was striding through the streets of Tripoli, dwarfed by cheering crowds.

Read moreSarkozy and Gaddafi: a blueprint for buying influence?

Just how the judges rule on Sarkozy’s case in September could cast that scene in a very different light – and strike another blow against already crumbling public trust in France’s political institutions. His trial closed soon after another Paris court sentenced far-right leader Marine Le Pen to a prison term and a five-year ban on running for office for embezzling European Union funds.

Giovanni Capoccia, professor of comparative politics at the University of Oxford’s department of politics and international relations, said that the allegations against Sarkozy were unlikely to impact the French public’s view of their political leaders – though not, he said, for the most inspiring reasons.

“The case of Sarkozy I think confirms a certain level of distrust in political parties,” he said. “In France, the level of trust for political parties and therefore the political class is below 20 percent, meaning more than 80 percent do not trust political parties. So I don't think that the extra cases – Sarkozy as you know is being tried for several different things – I don't think that that moves that dial that much. It's already very low, and it was already low even before this new trial of Sarkozy. So it’s old news in a certain sense.”