Disgraced Nicolas Sarkozy has vowed to clear his name and take his fight all the way to the European Supreme Court of Human Rights.
The former French president said his conviction for trying to bribe a judge was deeply unjust and that the case against him was riddled with inconsistencies.
"I can't accept being convicted for something I didn't do," he said.
Sarkozy, 66, was convicted on Monday of forming a "corruption pact" with his former lawyer and friend Thierry Herzog.
The crime was "particularly serious having been committed by a former president who was the guarantor of the independence of the judiciary", the judge said.
On Wednesday, in an interview with Le Figaro, an unrepentant Sarkozy hit back.
"I appealed the decision, maybe I will have to pursue this fight all the way to the European Court of Human Rights.
"That would be painful for me to have to get my own country condemned, but I'm ready to do so because that would be the price of democracy."
He is scheduled to be interviewed on TF1 TV news on Wednesday evening.
Sarkozy, who was sentenced to three years in jail, is not expected to spend time behind bars.
Two years were suspended and the remaining year would be served at home with an electronic bracelet.
The judgment was "riddled with inconsistencies", Sarkozy said.
"It doesn't provide any proof, but just a bunch of circumstantial evidence."
The conviction, which Sarkozy suggested stemmed from the political bias of investigating judges, seems to have ended any hopes of his political revival.
"I've said that I won't be a candidate and I stand by that," he said.
Sarkozy has three other legal cases pending.
On March 17, he is scheduled to face a second trial over accusations of fraudulently overspending in his failed 2012 re-election bid.
He is charged over allegations he received millions of euros from the late Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi for his 2007 election campaign.
And in January, prosecutors opened a probe into alleged influence peddling by Sarkozy, over his advisory activities in Russia.
Gertrude Bell's life in focus
A feature film
At one point, two feature films were in the works, but only German director Werner Herzog’s project starring Nicole Kidman would be made. While there were high hopes he would do a worthy job of directing the biopic, when Queen of the Desert arrived in 2015 it was a disappointment. Critics panned the film, in which Herzog largely glossed over Bell’s political work in favour of her ill-fated romances.
A documentary
A project that did do justice to Bell arrived the next year: Sabine Krayenbuhl and Zeva Oelbaum’s Letters from Baghdad: The Extraordinary Life and Times of Gertrude Bell. Drawing on more than 1,000 pieces of archival footage, 1,700 documents and 1,600 letters, the filmmakers painstakingly pieced together a compelling narrative that managed to convey both the depth of Bell’s experience and her tortured love life.
Books, letters and archives
Two biographies have been written about Bell, and both are worth reading: Georgina Howell’s 2006 book Queen of the Desert and Janet Wallach’s 1996 effort Desert Queen. Bell published several books documenting her travels and there are also several volumes of her letters, although they are hard to find in print. Original documents are housed at the Gertrude Bell Archive at the University of Newcastle, which has an online catalogue.
How Alia's experiment will help humans get to Mars
Alia’s winning experiment examined how genes might change under the stresses caused by being in space, such as cosmic radiation and microgravity.
Her samples were placed in a machine on board the International Space Station. called a miniPCR thermal cycler, which can copy DNA multiple times.
After the samples were examined on return to Earth, scientists were able to successfully detect changes caused by being in space in the way DNA transmits instructions through proteins and other molecules in living organisms.
Although Alia’s samples were taken from nematode worms, the results have much bigger long term applications, especially for human space flight and long term missions, such as to Mars.
It also means that the first DNA experiments using human genomes can now be carried out on the ISS.
Winners
Best Men's Player of the Year: Kylian Mbappe (PSG)
Maradona Award for Best Goal Scorer of the Year: Robert Lewandowski (Bayern Munich)
TikTok Fans’ Player of the Year: Robert Lewandowski
Top Goal Scorer of All Time: Cristiano Ronaldo (Manchester United)
Best Women's Player of the Year: Alexia Putellas (Barcelona)
Best Men's Club of the Year: Chelsea
Best Women's Club of the Year: Barcelona
Best Defender of the Year: Leonardo Bonucci (Juventus/Italy)
Best Goalkeeper of the Year: Gianluigi Donnarumma (PSG/Italy)
Best Coach of the Year: Roberto Mancini (Italy)
Best National Team of the Year: Italy
Best Agent of the Year: Federico Pastorello
Best Sporting Director of the Year: Txiki Begiristain (Manchester City)
Player Career Award: Ronaldinho
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Yemen's Bahais and the charges they often face
The Baha'i faith was made known in Yemen in the 19th century, first introduced by an Iranian man named Ali Muhammad Al Shirazi, considered the Herald of the Baha'i faith in 1844.
The Baha'i faith has had a growing number of followers in recent years despite persecution in Yemen and Iran.
Today, some 2,000 Baha'is reside in Yemen, according to Insaf.
"The 24 defendants represented by the House of Justice, which has intelligence outfits from the uS and the UK working to carry out an espionage scheme in Yemen under the guise of religion.. aimed to impant and found the Bahai sect on Yemeni soil by bringing foreign Bahais from abroad and homing them in Yemen," the charge sheet said.
Baha'Ullah, the founder of the Bahai faith, was exiled by the Ottoman Empire in 1868 from Iran to what is now Israel. Now, the Bahai faith's highest governing body, known as the Universal House of Justice, is based in the Israeli city of Haifa, which the Bahais turn towards during prayer.
The Houthis cite this as collective "evidence" of Bahai "links" to Israel - which the Houthis consider their enemy.
