Cecilia loses bid to stop book that says Sarko is ‘a stingy philanderer’

Cecilia Sarkozy, France's former First Lady, has lost a legal bid to block publication of a book in which she is quoted as calling her ex-husband a "stingy philanderer" who is "incapable of love", even towards his children, and who on becoming president plunged himself into a round of karaoke parties that would last until four in the morning. "There is a ridiculous side to him," journalist Anna Bitton, author of Cecilia, quotes her as saying. "He is not dignified. He is an unworthy president of the Republic. He has a behavioural problem."

Cecilia, whose sudden divorce from President Nicolas Sarkozy was announced in October, has been told by a Paris judge that despite the right to privacy under French law, "certain news events or subjects of general interest can justify publication based on the public's right to know and the principles of freedom of expression."

Officials at the Elysee Palace are furious about the book, excerpts of which have already appeared in Le Nouvel Observateur and the Le Point magazine, and claim that Mme Sarkozy denies ever making such remarks. However, Cecilia's lawyers sought their injunction not because it was inaccurate, but because the book had invaded her privacy.

The book is one of three about Mme Sarkozy published in Paris this week. Rupture, by Yves Derai and Michael Darmon, includes Cecilia's account of her role in freeing six Bulgarian nurses held in Libya, accused of infecting children with AIDS. Sent by her husband to sort out the matter - allegedly in a final bid to save their marriage - she claims to have single-handedly put pressure on Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi to release them.

"Gaddafi had no intention of freeing these girls," she is quoted as saying. "I led the negotiations - I took control of Gaddafi."

The book describes how Cecilia ordered French police to break open their jail cells and seize the nurses by force. But one of the freed Bulgarian nurses, Nassia Nenova, informed about the book, says this never happened: the Libyans unlocked the doors.

The third book, The Hidden Face of Cecilia Sarkozy, another unauthorised biography, claims that the President was rushed to hospital suffering from high fever and a throat abscess on October 21 - the day after he had announced his divorce. He was so depressed - as well as ill - that he demanded Cecilia visit him in hospital.

Only Anna Bitton offers an explanation as to why Cecilia chose to divorce Nicolas, four months after he took office. By giving up the trappings of power, Bitton suggests, Mme Sarkozy was making the "most beautiful possible declaration of love" to the man for whom she left Sarkozy for eight months in 2005.

Cecilia, 50, is quoted as saying of the French public relations executive Richard Attias: "He is the man of my life and I am the woman of his life."