The contrast between Prefect Claude Guéant, an "administrative monk," according to Nicolas Sarkozy, and his friend Alexandre Djouhri is striking. "He's enriching, he's there, he looks austere," said the French-Algerian businessman, smiling, "but, in fact, he's rather jovial." Guéant didn't react. Djouhri is jovial for both of them anyway. On Monday, January 20, he testified at the trial into suspicions of Libyan financing of Sarkozy's 2007 presidential campaign, with a Parisian urchin gall that has sometimes embarrassed even his friend, Sarkozy.

Djouhri gave a frank account of his incarceration in London, pending his extradition. He claims that he was naked, hanging on a chain, and that his jailers lifted his private parts – he explained this in cruder terms, lifting one leg after the other to make his point. The court was slightly embarrassed, and eventually asked him to "change his attitude." But that's Djouhri. He used the familiar "tu" pronoun with Sarkozy, then interior minister, and Guéant after one lunch at the Bristol.

He continued to see them at the Elysée, calling Sarkozy regularly. "And you'd say to him: 'Je t'embrasse'?" which literally means kissing someone goodbye, asked a prosecutor who had read the wiretaps. "What were you talking about?"

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