France's former Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin (C) and businessman Alexandre Djouhri (L) attending a football match in Paris in April 2014 Credit: FRANCK FIFE/AFP
France's former Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin (C) and businessman Alexandre Djouhri (L) attending a football match in Paris in April 2014 Credit: FRANCK FIFE/AFP
French Algerian businessman Alexandre Djouhri won't be kept in prison in London until he appears in court on April 17 since he has managed to avoid the preventive detention via a bail of one million pound sterling.
Djouhri was detained on Sunday at Heathrow airport as he arrived from Switzerland. He was asked not to leave the UK and to stay at his daughter's home in the British capital.
Alexandre, whose original name is Ahmad, wasn’t expecting this fate. He associated with prominent figures and used to move easily among countries in the Middle East, Africa, Europe and even Russia and China. Despite the fact that a European arrest warrant was issued in his case, Djouhri was invited to attend a reception for the French President in Algeria last month. He has also been eluding from the French judiciary since around one year and a half.
The businessman descends from a modest Algerian family that arrived in Sarcelles, Paris in 1959. During his youth, he switched many careers and had a confrontation with the judiciary in 1981 due to suspicions of his participation in attacking a jewelry shop. In 1986, he survived an assassination attempt when he was shot due to a dispute with a competitive group. Later on, Djouhri got introduced to prominent figures in the area of finance, business and politics. Soon, he became an expert in affairs of Africa and the Middle East.
It was normal that he moves from the business to politics in order to build strong ties with influencers.
In 2006, Djouhri cemented ties with the close circle of Sarkozy. When he won the elections in 2007, a luxurious sports vehicle would be seen in front of Elise Palace. The vehicle belonged to Djouhri whom the French judiciary suspects is involved in Libyan funding of Sarkozy campaign.
Libyan funding of Sarkozy isn't new and the relations between the French president and Gaddafi regime were highly complex. They reached the peak when Sarkozy encouraged ousting the regime of Gaddafi.
Lebanese businessman Ziad Takieddine narrated several times how he transferred millions of dollars in a private airplane from Tripoli to Le Bourget Airport and handed them out to the right-hand man of Sarkozy Claude Gueant.
Notably, Takieddine was a competitor of Djouhri in arms deals and mediation in Libya.
80 Years Ago World War II in Europe Was Over. Celebrating V-E Day Is Now Tinged with Some Dread https://english.aawsat.com/world/5140681-80-years-ago-world-war-ii-europe-was-over-celebrating-v-e-day-now-tinged-some-dread%C2%A0
European Parliament President Roberta Metsola (Frist row - 3rd R) holds a European Union flag during the commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe, as part of a plenary session at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, eastern France on May 7, 2025. (AFP)
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80 Years Ago World War II in Europe Was Over. Celebrating V-E Day Is Now Tinged with Some Dread
European Parliament President Roberta Metsola (Frist row - 3rd R) holds a European Union flag during the commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe, as part of a plenary session at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, eastern France on May 7, 2025. (AFP)
Even if the end of World War II in Europe spawned one of the most joyous days the continent ever lived, Thursday’s 80th anniversary of V-E Day is haunted as much by the specter of current-day conflict as it celebrates the defeat of ultimate evil.
Hitler’s Nazi Germany had finally surrendered after a half-decade of invading other European powers and propagating racial hatred that led to genocide, the Holocaust and the murdering of millions.
That surrender and the explosion of hope for a better life is being celebrated with parades in London and Paris and towns across Europe while even the leaders of erstwhile mortal enemies France and Germany are bonding again.
Germany’s new foreign minister, Johann Wadephul, paid tribute to “the enormous sacrifices of the Allies” in helping his country win its freedom from the Nazis and said that millions of people were “disenfranchised and tormented by the Nazi regime.”
“Hardly any day has shaped our history as much as May 8, 1945,” he said in a statement. “Our historical responsibility for this breach of civilization and the commemoration of the millions of victims of the Second World War unleashed by Nazi Germany gives us a mandate to resolutely defend peace and freedom in Europe today."
A German soldier carries a small coffin with the remains of fallen German soldiers of WWII to the grave during a funeral service at a memorial site for fallen soldiers in Halbe, Germany, Wednesday, April 30, 2025. (AP)
His comments underscore that former European enemies may thrive — to the extent that the 27-nation European Union even won the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize — but that the outlook has turned gloomy over the past year.
Bodies continue to pile up in Ukraine, where Russia's 2022 full-scale invasion started the worst war on the continent since 1945. The rise of the hard right in several EU member states is putting the founding democratic principles of the bloc under increasing pressure.
And even NATO, that trans-Atlantic military alliance that assured peace in Europe under the US nuclear umbrella and its military clout, is under internal strain rarely seen since its inception.
“The time of Europe’s carefree comfort, joyous unconcern is over. Today is the time of European mobilization around our fundamental values and our security,” Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said at a Dutch memorial event in the lead-up to the celebrations.
It makes this unlikely stretch of peace in Europe anything but a given.
"This peace is always unsure. There are always some clouds above our heads. Let’s do what we can, so that peace should reign forever in Europe,” Robert Chot, a Belgian World War II veteran, told a solemn gathering of the European legislature.
European Parliament President Roberta Metsola sounded gloomy.
Britain's Queen Camilla (L), flanked by Constable of the Tower of London, General Gordon Messenger (R), visits the ceramic poppies installation at the Tower of London on May 6, 2025 to celebrate the 80th anniversary of V-E Day also known as Victory in Europe Day, marking the end of the Second World War in Europe. (AFP)
“Once again war has returned to our continent, once again cities are being bombed, civilians attacked, families torn apart. The people of Ukraine are fighting not only for their land, but for freedom, for sovereignty, for democracy, just as our parents and our grandparents once did,” she told the legislature on Wednesday.
“The task before us today is the same as it was then to honor memory, to protect democracy, to preserve peace,” Metsola said.
Commemorations have been going all week through Europe, and Britain has taken a lead. Here too, the current-day plight of Ukraine in its fight against Russia took center stage.
“The idea that this was all just history and it doesn’t matter now somehow, is completely wrong,” UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer said. “Those values of freedom and democracy matter today.”
In London later Thursday, a service will be held in Westminster Abbey and a concert, for 10,000 members of the public, at Horse Guards Parade. In Paris, French President Emmanuel Macron is expected to oversee a ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the Arc de Triomphe.
And in Berlin, Chancellor Friedrich Merz will again highlight how Germany has remodeled itself into a beacon of European democracy by laying a wreath at the central memorial for the victims of war and tyranny.
And, symbolically, Russia and President Vladimir Putin will be totally out of lockstep with the rest of Europe, celebrating its Victory Day one day later with a huge military parade on Red Square in central Moscow to mark the massive Soviet contribution to defeat Nazi Germany.
