Angola on Wednesday condemned the outcome of a high-profile arms smuggling trial in a French court, which convicted all but six of the 42 defendants, including the son of an ex-president.
"This trial was unbalanced and unjust, tied up with political considerations and motives," said a Luanda government statement published by the state news agency Angop.
The court in Paris Tuesday sentenced the main players in a network that flouted an international embargo and shipped arms to Angola during its civil war in the 1990s, including a former government minister and a son of the late President Francois Mitterrand.
The French court also convicted Russian-Israeli tycoon Arkady Gaydamak in absentia for organising the arms sales to the formerly Marxist regime led by President Jose Eduardo dos Santos, who is still in power.
The Angolan government said it was "stupefied" by the conviction of "French citizens who helped our country to uphold the state and the democratic process, threatened by an armed subversion."
The Angolan civil war lasted from before independence in Portugal in 1975 to 2002, pitting the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), today the main opposition party, against the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), which has always held power.
The prolonged, mass trial in Paris heard that the MPLA was fuelled by a Soviet-made arsenal including 420 tanks, 150,000 shells, 170,000 anti-personnel mines, 12 helicopters and six warships, worth a total of 790 million dollars (534 million euros).
In its first official reaction to the trial dubbed "Angolagate", the Luanda government charged that the whole caseload had been motivated "by a spirit of vengeance on the part of certain Angolans who, despite the support of the French secret services, failed to take power by arms."
The Paris court on Tuesday convicted Gaydamak, in his absence, and French businessman Pierre Falcone, who was in court, to six years in jail.
Ex-interior minister Charles Pasqua was ordered jailed for a year, plus two more suspended, and he was heavily fined, like Jean-Christophe Mitterrand, son of the late president.
No Angolans were among the 42 defendants, but the prosecution contended that about 30 officials, including President Dos Santos, were given sizeable bribes.
Dos Santos broke off all contacts with Paris when the trial began. Since his election in 2007, French President Nicolas Sarkozy has attempted to renew the relationship. In May 2008, Sarkozy went to Luanda to "turn the page on the misunderstandings of the past."
By the time Sarkozy visited, Angola had overtaken Nigeria as Africa's leading oil producer.
Copyright 2009 AFP Global Edition
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