Alexandre Djouhri is always somewhat indignant when people find it hard to believe him, but his exasperation reached new heights on Monday, February 3, in the Paris courtroom, with his account of the incredible exfiltration of his friend Bashir Saleh from Libya to France and then on to South Africa. Saleh was the head of Libya's €5 billion sovereign wealth fund, and is constantly portrayed by defendants in the trial into suspicions of Libyan financing of Nicolas Sarkozy's 2007 presidential campaign as "having no blood on his hands" – which, for a chief of staff to Muammar Gaddafi, is certainly a feat.

With the end of the Libyan regime in 2011, Saleh met former French prime minister Dominique de Villepin in Djerba, Tunisia, at the beginning of August that year, thanks to the intermediary Djouhri, to find a way out of the war with the French authorities. On August 21, 2011, Tripoli fell, and he was placed under house arrest. Saleh and Djouhri called each other every day. "I'm his friend, like his brother," said the French-Algerian businessman at the hearing.

France was very fond of Saleh, who obviously knew things. Boris Boillon, as adviser to President Nicolas Sarkozy, intervened directly in 2008 to have the dignitary's wife naturalized, even though she did not meet the legal requirements. The whole family was exfiltrated from Libya under mysterious conditions. "There was talk of a helicopter taking them to a ship or a submarine," said the presiding judge. Bernard Squarcini, the central director of domestic intelligence, wrote twice to the Paris police prefect in 2012 to obtain a residence permit for Saleh and his new partner.

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