PARIS - A French court slapped prison terms and stiff fines Oct. 27 on the main players in a network that smuggled arms to Angola and included an ex-minister and the son of late president Francois Mitterrand.
Russian-Israeli tycoon Arkady Gaydamak was convicted in absentia for organizing the 1990s arms sales and sentenced to six years in jail at the trial that exposed a ring of corruption at the highest levels of Paris politics.
French businessman Pierre Falcone was also sentenced to six years' jail for his role in the $790-million trade to Angola and was immediately taken into custody by police at the courtroom, despite his plans to appeal.
Former interior minister Charles Pasqua was ordered jailed for a year, plus two more years suspended, and fined 100,000 euros ($150,000). He was not in court and lawyers said he intends to appeal.
Pasqua, now a senator in the French parliament, was a political mentor of President Nicolas Sarkozy but is no longer in his inner circle.
Jean-Christophe Mitterrand, who was an advisor on Africa to his president father, was given a two-year suspended sentence and a 375,000-euro fine for receiving embezzled funds from the illegal arms sales to Angola.
He accepted millions of euros in "consultant fees" on the arms deals between 1993 and 1998, the trial dubbed "Angolagate" heard.
The huge arsenal - 420 tanks, 150,000 shells, 170,000 anti-personnel mines, 12 helicopters, six warships - shored up President Eduardo Dos Santos's regime during its vicious bush war against UNITA rebels.
The arms originated in the former Soviet bloc and were sent to Africa in breach of French law through a French-based firm and its eastern European subsidiary.
Sales began when Socialist president Mitterrand was in power in 1993 and continued until 1998, three years after conservative Jacques Chirac's election.
Angola pushed to have the trial abandoned, and Sarkozy was forced to fly to Luanda in May 2008 to mend ties strained by the case.
The trial began last October and saw judges struggling to make sense of a labyrinth of murky deals linking French politicians, businessmen and public figures and a massive arms shipment to a war-torn African country.
In total 42 people were on trial.
Several defendants insisted the trade was carried out in full view of French authorities but that Paris kept quiet to shore up a regional ally and protect an important source of oil.
Despite a promise to come to Paris and explain his role, Gaydamak remained abroad and is believed to be currently in Moscow.
The court heard that he used his contacts in Eastern Europe to get his hands on the Soviet-designed weapons that were shipped to Luanda. He was convicted on counts of selling arms, influence peddling and money laundering.
Falcone, who holds French, Canadian and Angolan citizenship, was named Angola's ambassador to the United Nations Paris-based cultural organization UNESCO in 2003 and attempted to claim diplomatic immunity in the case.
He was convicted for influence peddling, arms sales and embezzlement, and Pasqua for influence peddling.
Right-wing politician Jean-Charles Marchiani was sentenced to three years in prison, with 21 months of that to be suspended, for complicity in influence peddling and embezzlement.
The French financier and best-selling author Paul-Loup Sulitzer got a 15-month suspended sentence for receiving embezzled funds.
Jacques Attali, a former advisor to the late president Mitterrand, and the magistrate Georges Fenech were acquitted.
The Army's Future Combat Systems (FCS) program is ready to test a few components that soldiers may have in their hands by 2010.
Help
