Super Cecilia Sarkozy

Madonna of the Balkans!

Cecilia Sarkozy was born Cecilia Ciganer, the daughter of Romanian-born father and a mother of Spanish and Belgian descent. She studied law briefly, modelled in the CHIAPARELLI fashion house and worked as parliamentary aide. She met Nicolas Sarkozy, the young mayor of a Paris suburb, presided over her marriage to another man in 1994. Four years later, after leaving their respective spouses they moved in together and in 1996 they married. Each has two children from their previous marriages and together they have one son Louis, who is 10 years of age. Cecilia Sarkozy married the youngest French mayor Nicolas Sarkozy in 1996. She left her husband and two small daughters.

In 2005, she announced she was leaving since she has met and fallen for Moroccan-born French executive Richard Attias. Mr. Sarkozy, then interior minister pursued her to the airport in an official vehicle with sirens blaring. He lost several kilograms of his weight in a week. In June 2006 after several trips to Paris, she returned to her husband Mr. Sarkozy, seemingly for good. When the couple got back together he wrote about their split and reconciliation in the best-selling book, Testimony: France in the Twenty-First Century.

She was absent for much of Sarkozy's presidential election campaign and did not go out to vote in the official ballot in May 2007. She left the G8 summit after 24 hours. She did not show up for lunch with US president George W. Bush because of a soar throat and then was seen merrily out shopping the next day. The editor of the left-leaning Liberation, "she is completely uncontrollable and unpredictable. She was not there when you expect her and there when you don't expect her." Even the victory dinner following the presidential elections leaving her husband in the lurch. French newspapers and magazines have called the 49 year old madame sarkozy an enigma, a rebel and spoiled jetsetter and a free-spirit. "Sometimes you don't know what you make of her" said one publication, noting the cheers she received in Bulgaria when she freed 6 medics who were accused of infecting hundreds of Libyan children with HIV. Upon her return home, Le Monde christened her tongue-in-cheek "Super-Cecilia, Madonna of the Balkans."

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She was sent by her husband as an official envoy to Libya to ensure the release of Bulgarian medics from the charges of infecting children with the HIV virus.

As soon as a French government jet bearing five Bulgarian nurses and one Palestinian doctor landed in Bulgaria on Tuesday, new French president Nicolas Sarkozy gave a press conference. With the release of the six medics from a Libyan prison, a "nightmare" had ended, he said -- not neglecting to mention the role of his wife. "Cecilia," he declared, "has done a remarkable job."

It was the second time Madame Sarkozy had appeared in Tripoli in two weeks. Alongside the European Union External Affairs Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner, she met with Libyan President Moammar Gadhafi to discuss the medics, who had been jailed in Libya since 1999. For years they had faced execution on charges of infecting 426 Libyan children with HIV.

EU Commission President José Manuel Barroso thanked the Sarkozys and called the contribution of the French first lady "essential." But in Brussels as well as Berlin -- not to mention on the editorial boards of some French newspapers -- the opinion was general that Madame Sarkozy had no real role in Tripoli. "In this context the wife of the president, whatever her personal qualities, had no legitimacy -- none," wrote the Strasbourg newspaper Dernières Nouvelles d'Alsace. "We can only hope that the purpose of this trip was not just to win publicity," wrote La Croix.

In fact, according to information obtained by SPIEGEL, her two visits were regarded by negotiators in Berlin and Brussels as at best annoying and at worst counterproductive. The general feeling in Berlin political circles is that the Sarkozys' last-minute interference threatened to undo a complex deal which diplomats had been working on for months.

In the deal, the EU paid €9.5 million to improve conditions at the childrens' hospital in Benghazi where the medics had worked. EU Commissioner Ferrero-Waldner and German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier had settled a deal before the EU summit in June, according to SPIEGEL's Berlin sources. But on her first visit to Tripoli, Mrs. Sarkozy reportedly offered funds to modernize yet another hospital -- which gave the Libyans a reason to hold out for more money.

The centerpiece of the negotiations was the so-called Benghazi Fund, set up to help families of the infected children. The goal was to pay $1 million (€724,000) in damages per child. The first $44 million came from Bulgaria in the form of debt forgiveness. The Libyan government contributed $74 million, while the EU promised only the money earmarked to clean up the hospital.

The structure of the Benghazi fund allows the EU to argue that no actual ransom was paid for the medics, and President Sarkozy reiterated today in his press conference that neither France nor the EU had paid a cent for the medics' freedom.

"The nurses, in my heart, were French," he said. "They were French because they were unjustly accused and because they suffered and because we had to get them out of there."

In a new book published in Sofia, Bulgaria, a Bulgarian nurse relates how she was tortured in a Libyan jail where she was held for more than eight years on charges of infecting hundreds of children with HIV in a hospital AIDS scandal. In the book, Eight Years as Gadhafi's Hostage nurse Kristiana Valcheva tells how she and five other Bulgarian medics - four nurses and a doctor - were repeatedly tied and beaten during their time in the prison. Valcheva describes how she was hung from door frames and her feet were thrashed with cables. She, another nurse and the doctor also received electric shocks, she said. And police threatened to set dogs on her and even infect her with HIV in an attempt to force her to confess, Valcheva said. "My name was the one that was mentioned most. I was the most demonized," she said. "I want people to know the truth," she added. The book, which was already published in French translation in October, describes the eight years that Valcheva spent working as a nurse in Libyan hospitals before being arrested in 1999. It then goes on to describe the medics' eight-and-a-half-year ordeal in prison. The six were charged with injecting more than 400 children with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, at the Children's Hospital in Benghazi and were sentenced to death by firing squad three times. The medics had at once been condemned to death but always asserted they were not guilty and were tortured to admit their

The 48 year old nurse said "I know I am free, I know I am on Bulgarian soil, but I still cannot believe it. We were afraid to even say out loud what we have dreamed about. We were told about the news of our release at 4 am and we were let out at 5:45 am to board a plane."

The six foreign medic convicted with infecting hundred were freed on the 24th of July after a partnership deal between Libya and the EU ended their 8 year ordeal. Their return to Bulgaria with Mrs. Cecilia Sarkozy on the French presidential airplane and their public reception in Sophia airport by the Bulgarian president, their families and the people, gave an entire nation pleasure. Foreign HIV experts testified the infection started before the medics arrived at the Benghazi hospital and is probably the result of poor hygiene. As the first French lady and before her divorce, Ceciilia succeeded to release of the Bulgarian medics and strengthen relations with Libyan leader Ghaddafi. But she left her husband in the presidential palace with a broken heart. Since their divorce, President Sarkozy has been linked to former Italian supermodel Carla Bruni.
 

When she was the French first lady, Cecilia Sarkozy adopted the issue of the Bulgarian medics and flew to Libya and ushered six long-jailed medics to freedom on Tuesday morning. She got to smile for the cameras in Bulgaria, but officials in Berlin and Brussels consider her a PR queen who meddled in delicate negotiations at the last minute. Since that visit, French-Libyan leaders help high-level meetings. This included a visit to Paris by Col Gaddafi, for which he was allowed to bring with him his presidential tent, in which he would hold various meetings.