PARIS (AP) — A French court on Monday convicted Marine Le Pen of embezzlement and barred her from seeking public office for five years — a hammer blow to the far-right leader’s presidential hopes and an earthquake for French politics.

Le Pen’s lawyer said she would appeal the verdict — but she will remain ineligible while she does and so could be ruled out of the 2027 presidential race. She was also sentenced to two years under house arrest.

The court ruling was a political as well as a judicial temblor for France, hobbling one of the leading contenders to succeed President Emmanuel Macron at the end of his second and final term. So broad were the political implications that even some of Le Pen’s opponents reacted by saying that the Paris court had gone too far.

Le Pen herself wasn’t around to hear the chief judge pronounce the sentence that threw her career into a tailspin. By then, she’d already strode out of the courtroom, when the judge first indicated that the 56-year-old would be barred from office, without saying straight away for how long.

Although Le Pen didn’t immediately comment, her supporters quickly expressed disapproval. Jordan Bardella, her 29-year-old protégé who could replace her on the ballot in 2027 if she can’t run, said on X that Le Pen “is being unjustly condemned” and that French democracy “is being executed.”

Hungary’s populist prime minister, Viktor Orbán, quickly took to social media to express his support, posting “Je suis Marine!” — I am Marine — on X.

Among political opponents of Le Pen who expressed unease was conservative lawmaker Laurent Wauquiez, who said the verdict put “a very heavy weight on our democracy.”

The sentence could prevent Le Pen from making what would have been her fourth run for the presidency in 2027, a scenario she has previously described as a “political death.” The party’s most recognized figurehead and a formidable and seasoned political campaigner, Le Pen was runner-up to Macron in 2017 and 2022 presidential elections, and her party’s electoral support has grown in recent years.

Only an appeal ruling that overturns the ban on public office could restore her hopes of running. But with the election just two years away, time is running out and there’s no guarantee that an appeals court would rule more favorably. Appeals in France can take several years to conclude.

The verdict was a resounding defeat for Le Pen’s National Rally party, formerly the National Front.

She and 24 other party officials were accused of having used money intended for European Union parliamentary aides to instead pay staff who worked for the party between 2004 and 2016, violating the 27-nation bloc’s regulations.

The judge handed down guilty verdicts to eight other current or former members of her party who, like Le Pen, previously served as European Parliament lawmakers. Also convicted were 12 people who served as parliamentary aides and three others. Only one defendant was acquitted. All had denied wrongdoing.

The chief judge said Le Pen had been at the heart of “a system” that her party used to siphon off EU parliament funds, though she said they didn’t enrich themselves personally. The ruling described the embezzlement as “a democratic bypass” that deceived the parliament and voters.

From the front row of the court, Le Pen had initially shown no immediate reaction when the judge first declared her guilty. But she grew more agitated as the verdict was delivered in greater detail. She shook her head in disagreement as the judge said Le Pen’s party illegally used European funds for its own benefit.

“Incredible,” Le Pen she whispered at one point. She then abruptly left without warning, picking up her bag and striding out, her heels clicking on the hardwood floor, leaving many in courtroom in disbelief, turning their heads towards the door.

Rodolphe Bosselut, Le Pen’s lawyer, said he was “appalled” at the court’s decision, which he described as “extremely scandalous” and said would be appealed.

During the nine-week trial that took place in late 2024, Le Pen argued that ineligibility “would have the effect of depriving me of being a presidential candidate” and disenfranchise her supporters.

“There are 11 million people who voted for the movement I represent. So tomorrow, potentially, millions and millions of French people would see themselves deprived of their candidate in the election,” she told the panel of three judges.

Le Pen also serves as a lawmaker in France’s National Assembly, a role not affected by the ineligibility ruling that she can keep for now.

But if Macron dissolves parliament again as he did last year and calls early legislative elections, she would be barred from running.

Leicester reported from Le Pecq, France. Thomas Adamson in Paris and Justin Spike in Budapest contributed.

LONDON (AP) — British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Sunday Europe was at a crossroads in history and must do the heavy lifting to defend itself as world leaders met in London to discuss ways of working together to stop Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Starmer pledged to supply more arms to defend Ukraine, announcing that the U.K. will use 1.6 billion pounds ($2 billion) in export financing to supply 5,000 air defense missiles.

His call for European allies to increase their arms spending to shore up their own defenses and Ukraine’s was not a sign that he thought the United States had become an unreliable ally, he said. No two countries are closely aligned than the U.K. and the U.S., Starmer said.

“One thing our history tells us is that if there is conflict in Europe, it will wash up on our shores,” he said.

The summit comes two days after U.S. support for Ukraine appeared in greater jeopardy after President Donald Trump lashed out at Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and said he wasn’t grateful enough for U.S. support.

“Even while Russia talks about peace, they are continuing their relentless aggression,” Starmer said at the outset of the meeting.

Starmer, flanked by Zelenskyy and French President Emmanuel Macron, said the three of them had agreed to work on a peace plan to take to the U.S., which has discussed brokering a peace deal.

“To support peace in our continent, and to succeed, this effort must have strong U.S. backing,” he said.

The meeting had been overshadowed by the extraordinary scolding of Zelenskyy by Trump.

Starmer said he’s focused on being a bridge to restore peace talks, whose collapse he used as an opportunity to re-engage with Trump, Zelenskyy and Macron rather than “ramp up the rhetoric.”

Sunday’s summit included talks on establishing a European military force to be sent to Ukraine to underpin a ceasefire. Starmer said it would involve “a coalition of the willing.”

Starmer told the BBC he does not trust Russian President Vladimir Putin but does trust Trump. “Do I believe Donald Trump when he says he wants lasting peace? The answer to that is yes,” he said.

Starmer said there are “intense discussions” to get a security guarantee from the U.S.

“If there is to be a deal, if there is to be a stopping of the fighting, then that agreement has to be defended, because the worst of all outcomes is that there is a temporary pause and then (Russian President Vladimir) Putin comes again,” Starmer said.

The three essentials Starmer listed for a successful peace deal were: arming the Ukrainians to put them in a position of strength; including a European element to guarantee security; and providing a “U.S. backstop,” to prevent Putin from breaking promises.

Starmer hosted the meeting at Lancaster House, a 200-year-old mansion near Buckingham Palace, following a charm offensive last week to persuade Trump to put Ukraine at the center of negotiations and tilt his allegiances toward Europe.

Leaders from Germany, Denmark, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Spain, Canada, Finland, Sweden, the Czech Republic and Romania were at the summit. The Turkish foreign minister, NATO secretary-general and the presidents of the European Commission and European Council were also in attendance.

Zelenskyy received broad support from leaders across Europe after the White House fiasco, an exceptional attack on an ally broadcast on live television.

Starmer embraced Zelenskyy as he arrived at the meeting Sunday.

Europe has been anxious since Trump initiated direct peace talks with Putin, who had been isolated by most Western leaders since invading Ukraine three years ago. The scramble to remain relevant and protect European interests as their once stalwart ally appeared to be cozying up to Putin was even more troubling when Trump called Zelenskyy a dictator and falsely said Ukraine started the war.

Meetings in recent days had provided some hope — until Zelenskyy’s visit to the White House.

Visits to the Oval Office by Macron, who had declared his visit a “turning point,” and Starmer were seen as steps in the right direction. The meetings were cordial and Trump even took a gentler tone toward Ukraine, though he would not commit to providing U.S. security guarantees and maintained Europe would need to provide peacekeeping troops.

Within 12 hours of Starmer’s return from Washington, the talk of peace seemed to collapse as Vice President JD Vance berated Zelenskyy for challenging Trump’s assertions that Russian President Vladimir Putin could be trusted.

“Starmer did an impressive job of asserting Europe’s agency in the war on Ukraine and conveying to President Trump that Europe is willing and able to take a leading role in implementing any credible peace deal,” said Rachel Ellehuus, director-general of Royal United Services Institute, a defense and security think tank. “Unfortunately, Friday’s White House meeting was a major step backward.”

Ukraine can no longer count on military or political support from the U.S. after Trump declared himself neutral in negotiations, Ellehuus said. She said Europe needs to step in and could release some 200 billion euros ($207 billion) in seized Russian assets to help fund that effort.

Starmer pledged this week to boost military spending to 2.5% of gross domestic product by 2027. Other European nations may follow suit.

Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala said Saturday that Europe faces a historic test and has to look after itself. He said European countries have to increase their arms spending to reach at least 3% of GDP.

“If we don’t increase our effort fast enough and let the aggressor dictate its conditions, we won’t end up well,” he said.

Macron, who said it was legitimate for the U.S. to shift its focus to dealing with China and Asia, also called for more defense spending.

“We should have woken up earlier,” Macron said. “I’ve been saying for years that we need a more sovereign, more united, more independent Europe.”

Associated Press writers Jill Lawless in London, Karel Janicek in Prague and Samuel Petrequin contributed.

A former surgeon went on trial in France on Monday for the alleged rape or sexual abuse of 299 victims, most of them children who were his patients, in what investigators and his own notebooks describe as a pattern of violence spanning over three decades.

Joël Le Scouarnec, now 74, will face hundreds of victims during his four-month trial in Vannes, Brittany. He faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted, on top of 15 years he has been serving after being found guilty in 2020 of rape and sexual assault of children.

His lawyer, Maxime Tessier, told the court that Le Scouarnec accepts responsibility for “a large majority” of the allegations against him.

Some survivors have no memory of the assaults, having been unconscious at the time. One man now in his thirties testified that he was assaulted during a consultation in 1995, when he was just a young boy.

“I remember certain things in the recovery room. I was in total panic. I called my dad,” he told the court.

Trial builds on Gisèle Pélicot’s momentum

Le Scouarnec’s trial comes as activists are pushing to dismantle taboos that have long surrounded sexual abuse in France. The most prominent case was that of Gisèle Pélicot, who was drugged and raped by her now ex-husband and dozens of other men who were convicted and sentenced in December to prison terms ranging from three to 20 years.

The Le Scouarnec case began in 2017, when a 6-year-old neighbor said the doctor had touched her over the fence separating their properties.

A subsequent search of his home uncovered more than 300,000 photos, 650 pedophilic, zoophilic and scatological video files, as well as notebooks where he described himself as a pedophile and detailed his actions, according to investigation documents.

In 2020, Le Scouarnec was convicted of rape and sexual assault of four children, including two nieces, and was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
He has admitted to child abuse dating to 1985-1986, but some cases could not be prosecuted because the statute of limitations has expired.

Trial focuses on 25-year span

The Vannes trial will examine alleged rapes and other abuses committed between 1989 and 2014 against 158 men and 141 women who were aged 11 on average at the time.

The doctor sexually abused both boys and girls when they were alone in their hospital rooms, according to investigation documents.

“I didn’t really remember the operation. I remembered the post-operation, a surgeon who was quite mean,” one of the victims, Amélie Lévêque, recalled of her time in the hospital when she was 9 years old in 1991. “I cried a lot.”

Years later, she described feeling overwhelmed when she learned that her name appeared in Le Scouarnec’s notebooks.

“That was the beginning of the answers to a lifetime of questions, and then it was the beginning of the descent into hell,” she told public broadcaster France 3. “I felt like I had lost control of everything. I wasn’t crazy, but now I had to face the truth of what had happened.”

“I fell into a deep depression. … My family tried to help, but I felt completely alone.”

The Associated Press does not name people who say they were sexually assaulted unless they consent to being identified or decide to tell their stories publicly.

Le Scouarnec had already been convicted in 2005 for possessing and importing child sexual abuse material and sentenced to four months of suspended prison time. Despite that conviction, he was appointed as a hospital practitioner the following year.

Some child protection groups joined the proceedings as civil parties, saying they hope to toughen the legal framework to prevent such abuse.
___
Vaux-Montagny reported from Lyon, France. Associated Press writers Sylvie Corbet in Paris and John Leicester in Le Pecq, France, contributed to this report.

Need help? Visit RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Online Hotline or the National Sexual Violence Resource Center’s website.

A French millionaire who founded a cryptocurrency company was rescued with his wife after the two were abducted earlier this week.

David Balland, a founder of Ledger ― a company that sells devices to store crypto assets ― was abducted alongside his wife, Amadine, early Tuesday morning from their home in Vierzon, France. Ledger raised $104 million in 2023, Bloomberg reported.

More than 230 officers aided in locating the kidnappers, who had asked for a ransom of $10 million to be paid through crypto, the Telegraph reported.

Authorities eventually located Balland on Wednesday night at a remote house near Châteauroux after police tracked the GPS of a suspect’s car, according to the Telegraph. Balland was found beaten and bloodied and missing a part of his finger.

Amadine was later found bound but unharmed in the back of a van in Essonne.

Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau told reporters that the kidnappers cut off a part of Balland’s finger and sent it to his business associate demanding money.

Ten people have been arrested for their suspected role in the abductions.

“This was an extremely complex case,” Gen. Ghislain Réty said at a Thursday night press conference, The New York Times reported.

Beccuau said at the press conference that “part of the ransom has been paid.”

“Almost all of it has been traced, frozen and seized,” Beccuau added.

PARIS (AP) — Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of France’s far-right National Front who was known for fiery rhetoric against immigration and multiculturalism that earned him both staunch supporters and widespread condemnation, has died. He was 96.

A polarizing figure in French politics, Le Pen’s controversial statements, including Holocaust denial, led to multiple convictions and strained his political alliances.

Le Pen, who once reached the second round of the 2002 presidential election, was eventually estranged from his daughter, Marine Le Pen, who renamed his National Front party, kicked him out and transformed it into one of France’s most powerful political forces while distancing herself from her father’s extremist image.

Jordan Bardella, president of the National Rally as the party is now known, confirmed Le Pen’s death in a post on social media platform X on Tuesday. Bardella’s unusually warm tribute highlighted Le Pen’s polemical past, including his ties to the Algerian war, describing him as a “tribune of the people” who “always served France” and expressing condolences to his family, including Marine.

The post appeared to blur the distance the rebranded party had sought to establish between its firebrand founder and its more polished, modern direction under Marine Le Pen.

Marine Le Pen, thousands of kilometers (miles) away in the French territory of Mayotte, was inspecting the aftermath of destructive Cyclone Chido at the time of her father’s death.

Despite his exclusion from the party in 2015, Le Pen’s divisive legacy endures, marking decades of French political history and shaping the trajectory of the far right.

His death came at a crucial time for his daughter. She now faces a potential prison term and a ban on running for political office if convicted in the embezzling trial currently underway.

A fixture for decades in French politics, the fiery Jean-Marie Le Pen was a wily political strategist and gifted orator who used his charisma to captivate crowds with his anti-immigration message.

The portly, silver-haired son of a Breton fisherman viewed himself as a man with a mission — to keep France French under the banner of the National Front. Picking Joan of Arc as the party’s patron saint, Le Pen made Islam, and Muslim immigrants, his primary target, blaming them for the economic and social woes of France.

A former paratrooper and Foreign Legionnaire who fought in Indochina and Algeria, he led sympathizers into political and ideological battles with a panache that became a signature of his career.

“If I advance, follow me; if I die, avenge me; if I shirk, kill me,” Le Pen said at a 1990 party congress, reflecting the theatrical style that for decades fed the fervor of followers.

Le Pen, who lost an eye in a street fight in his youth and for years wore a black eyepatch, was a constant force in French political life, impossible for politicians of the left or right to ignore.

In election after election, he proved the spoiler, forcing rivals to scramble to counter him, and sometimes stoop to harvest far-right votes.

Convicted numerous times of antisemitism and routinely accused of xenophobia and racism, Le Pen routinely countered that he was simply a patriot protecting the identity of “eternal France.”

Le Pen had recently been exempted from prosecution on health grounds from a high-profile trial over his party’s suspected embezzlement of European Parliament funds that opened in September.

French judicial authorities placed Le Pen under legal guardianship in February at the request of his family as his health declined, French media reported. He had been in frail health for some time.

Le Pen was notably convicted in 1990 for a radio remark made three years earlier in which he referred to the Nazi gas chambers as a “detail in World War II history.” In 2015, he repeated the remark, saying he “did not at all” regret it, triggering the ire of his daughter — by then the party leader — and a new conviction in 2016.

He also was convicted for a 1988 remark linking in a play on words a Cabinet minister with the Nazi crematory ovens, and for a 1989 comment blaming the “Jewish international” for helping seed “this anti-national spirit.”

In another setback, Le Pen lost his European Parliament seat in 2002 for a year for assaulting a Socialist politician during a 1997 election campaign.

More recently, Le Pen and 26 National Front officials, including his daughters Marine and Yann Le Pen, have been accused of using money destined for EU parliamentary aides to pay staff who instead did political work for the party between 2004 and 2016, in violation of the 27-nation bloc’s regulations. Jean-Marie Le Pen was deemed unfit to testify.

AVIGNON, France (AP) — A French court on Thursday declared the ex-husband of Gisèle Pelicot guilty of aggravated rapes and all other charges against him.

The verdict for 72-year-old Dominique Pelicot was read by the lead judge of the court in Avignon, Roger Arata. He hasn’t yet delivered the sentence, which can be up to 20 years imprisonment.

The historic case has profoundly shaken the country over the past several months.

Dominique Pelicot, admitted that for years he knocked his then wife of 50 years out with drugs so that he and strangers he recruited online could abuse her while he filmed the assaults.

The appalling ordeal inflicted over nearly a decade on Gisèle Pelicot, now a 72-year-old grandmother, in what she thought was a loving marriage and her courage during the bruising and stunning trial have transformed the retired power company worker into a feminist hero of the nation.

Stretching over more than three months, the trial galvanized campaigners against sexual violence and spurred calls for tougher measures to stamp out rape culture.

Dominique Pelicot and 49 other men were tried in the southern French city of Avignon for aggravated rape and attempted rape and face up to 20 years imprisonment if convicted.

Prosecutors asked that he get the maximum penalty and for sentences of 10 to 18 years for the others. They also requested a four-year prison term for another defendant who was tried for aggravated sexual assault.

The 51 men were all accused of having taken part in Dominique Pelicot’s sordid rape and abuse fantasies that were acted out in the couple’s retirement home in the small Provence town of Mazan and elsewhere.

Dominique Pelicot testified that he hid tranquilizers in food and drink that he gave his then wife, knocking her out so profoundly that he could do what he wanted to her for hours.

One of the men was on trial not for assaulting Gisèle Pelicot but for drugging and raping his own wife — with the help and drugs from Dominique Pelicot, who was also tried for raping the other man’s wife.

The five judges voted by secret ballot in their rulings, with a majority vote required to convict and also for the sentences of those found guilty.

Campaigners against sexual violence are hoping for exemplary prison terms and view the trial as a possible turning point in the fight against rape culture and the use of drugs to subdue victims.

Gisèle Pelicot’s courage in waiving her right to anonymity as a survivor of sexual abuse and successfully pushing for the hearings and shocking evidence — including videos — to be heard in open court have fueled conversations both on a national level in France and among families, couples and groups of friends about how to better protect women and the role that men can play in pursuing that goal.

“Men are starting to talk to women — their girlfriends, mothers and friends — in ways they hadn’t before,” said Fanny Foures, 48, who joined other women from the feminist group Les Amazones in gluing messages of support for Gisèle Pelicot on walls around Avignon before the verdict.

“It was awkward at first, but now real dialogues are happening,” she said.

“Some women are realizing, maybe for the first time, that their ex-husbands violated them, or that someone close to them committed abuse,” Foures added. “And men are starting to reckon with their own behavior or complicity — things they’ve ignored or failed to act on. It’s heavy, but it’s creating change.”

A large banner that campaigners hung on a city wall opposite the courthouse read, “MERCI GISELE” — thank you Gisèle.

Dominique Pelicot first came to the attention of police in September 2020, when a supermarket security guard caught him surreptitiously filming up women’s skirts.

Police subsequently found his library of homemade images documenting years of abuse inflicted on his wife — more than 20,000 photos and videos in all, stored on computer drives and catalogued in folders marked “abuse,” “her rapists,” “night alone” and other titles.

The abundance of evidence led police to the other defendants. In the videos, investigators counted 72 different abusers, but weren’t able to identify them all.

Although some of the accused — including Dominique Pelicot — acknowledged that they were guilty of rape, many didn’t, even in the face of video evidence. The hearings sparked wider debate in France about whether the country’s legal definition of rape should be expanded to include specific mention of consent.

Some defendants argued that Dominique Pelicot’s consent covered his wife, too. Some sought to excuse their behavior by insisting that they hadn’t intended to rape anyone when they responded to the husband’s invitations to come to their home. Some laid blame at his door, saying he misled them into thinking they were taking part in consensual kink.

AVIGNON, France (AP) — French judges plan to deliver hugely anticipated verdicts this week in a historic drugging-and-rape trial that has turned the victim, Gisèle Pelicot, into a feminist hero.

Everything about the trial in the southern French city of Avignon has been exceptional, most of all Pelicot herself.

She has been the epitome of steely dignity and resilience through the more than three months of appalling testimony, including extracts from her now ex-husband’s sordid library of homemade abuse videos.

Dominique Pelicot carefully catalogued how he habitually tranquilized his wife of 50 years during their last decade together, so he and dozens of strangers he met online could rape her while she was unconscious.

Staggeringly, Dominique Pelicot found it easy to recruit his alleged accomplices. Many had jobs. Most are fathers. They came from all walks of life, with the youngest in his 20s and the oldest in their 70s. In all, 50 men, including Dominique Pelicot, stood trial for aggravated rape and attempted rape. Another man was tried for aggravated sexual assault.

“They regarded me like a rag doll, like a garbage bag,” Gisèle Pélicot testified in court.

Sifting through the charges, the evidence, the backgrounds of the accused and their defenses took so long that Dominique and Gisèle Pelicot had birthdays during the trial, with both turning 72.

The verdicts are expected Thursday, or Friday at the latest, with the five judges ruling by secret ballot. Campaigners against sexual violence are hoping for exemplary prison sentences and view the trial as a possible turning point in the fight against rape culture and the use of drugs to subdue victims.

At protests during the trial, demonstrators held up pop-art images of Gisèle Pelicot with her bob haircut and round sunglasses, along with slogans such as, “Shame is changing sides” and “Gisèle, we believe you !” They also booed defendants as they entered the courthouse yelling, “We recognize you” and “Shame.”

Dominique Pelicot’s meticulous recording and cataloguing of the encounters — police found more than 20,000 photos and videos on his computer drives, in folders titled “abuse,” “her rapists” or “night alone” — provided police investigators with an abundance of evidence and helped lead them to the defendants. That also set the case apart from many others in which sexual violence is unreported or isn’t prosecuted because the evidence isn’t as strong.

Gisèle Pelicot and her lawyers fought successfully for shocking video and other evidence to be heard and watched in open court, to show that she bore no shame and was clearly unconscious during the alleged rapes, undermining some defendants’ claims that she might have been feigning sleep or even have been a willing participant.

Her courage — one woman, alone, against dozens of men — proved inspirational. Supporters, mostly women, lined up early each day for a place in the courthouse or to cheer and thank Gisèle Pelicot as she walked in and out — stoic, humble, and gracious but also cognizant that her ordeal resonated beyond Avignon and France.

She said she was fighting for “all those people around the world, women and men, who are victims of sexual violence.”

“Look around you: You are not alone,” she said.

Dominique Pelicot testified that he hid tranquilizers in food and drink that he gave his wife, knocking her out so profoundly that he could do what he wanted to her for hours.

In his medical records, police investigators found that he had been prescribed hundreds of tranquilizer tablets as well as the the erectile dysfunction drug Viagra. He told police that he started drugging his wife in 2011, before they left the Paris region to retire in Mazan, a small town in Provence where he invited other men to rape her in their bedroom.

In the videos, police investigators counted 72 different abusers but weren’t able to identify them all. Dominique Pelicot told investigators that he also shared advice with people about drugging techniques and provided tranquilizers to others, too.

Gisèle Pelicot told investigators that blackouts she suffered grew more frequent after they retired to Mazan in 2013, but that they stopped after her then-husband was taken into custody in 2020.

Spurred on by the trial, France’s government this month helped roll out a media campaign alerting the public to the dangers of chemical submission, with a number for victims to call. The campaign poster reads: “Chemical submission takes away your memories but leaves traces.”

Although some of the accused — including Dominique Pelicot — acknowledged they were guilty of rape, many did not, even in the face of video evidence. The hearings have sparked wider debate in France about whether the country’s legal definition of rape should be expanded to include specific mention of consent.

Some defendants argued that Dominique Pelicot’s consent covered his wife, too. Some sought to excuse their behavior by insisting that they hadn’t intended to rape anyone when they responded to the husband’s invites. Some laid blame at his door, saying he misled them into thinking they were partaking in consensual kink. And some suggested that perhaps he had also drugged them — which Dominique Pelicot denied.

Campaigners refused to buy it. “A rape is a rape” read a large banner hung opposite the courthouse.

Prosecutor Laure Chabaud appealed to the judges for a verdict that will make clear “that ordinary rape doesn’t exist, that accidental or involuntary rape doesn’t exist,” according to French media that followed the daily proceedings.

What Gisèle Pelicot initially described as a happy marriage to “a great guy” started to unravel in September 2020, when a supermarket security guard caught Dominique Pelicot surreptitiously filming up women’s skirts.

Police investigators called her in for questioning and confronted her with the unfathomable — some of her husband’s secret photos of her.

She left him, taking just two suitcases, “all that was left for me of 50 years of life together.”

Prosecutors have asked for the maximum possible penalty — 20 years — for Dominique Pelicot, and sentences of 10-18 years for the others tried on rape charges.

“Twenty years between the four walls of a prison,” Chabaud, the prosecutor, said. “It’s both a lot and not enough.”

PARIS (AP) — The reopening this weekend of Notre Dame is a succession of ceremonies to breathe life back into the iconic cathedral and celebrate the recovery from its devastating fire in 2019.

High points will be the ritualized reopening of the cathedral’s massive doors, the reawakening of its thunderous organ and the celebration of the first Mass. For both France and the Catholic Church, the televised and tightly scripted ceremonies will be an opportunity to display can-do resilience and global influence.

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and dozens of heads of state and government accepted invites from French President Emmanuel Macron. The Catholic faithful are so eager to worship again inside Notre Dame that tickets for the first week of Masses were snapped up in 25 minutes, the cathedral’s rector says.

During part one of Notre Dame’s rebirth on Saturday evening, Archbishop Laurent Ulrich will lead more than 1,500 guests through a reopening service. Part two, on Sunday, is an inaugural Mass, with special rites to consecrate the main altar.

On Saturday, Ulrich will first reopen Notre Dame’s great doors — by tapping them with his crosier, or bishop’s staff.

The staff was created for the occasion by designer Sylvain Dubuisson. The wood — bearing visible black traces from the blaze — came from pieces of the cathedral roof that collapsed in the inferno, Dubuisson told The Associated Press.

In response to the archbishop’s door-knocks, the cathedral will erupt into song, its choirs once again filling the cavernous spaces.

That back-and-forth will happen three times. The doors will then open so guests can stream inside past their sculptures of biblical figures.

The voice of Notre Dame’s great organ hasn’t been heard in public since the blaze coated the nearly 8,000 pipes with toxic dust released when the lead roofing burned.

After the door-opening rites, Ulrich will reawaken the giant instrument. He’ll address it directly with a series of eight incantations, starting with “Awaken, organ, sacred instrument: Sing the praise of God.”

That prompt will launch a conversation with the organ, with four organists (Olivier Latry, Vincent Dubois, Thibault Fajoles and Thierry Escaich) taking turns to play its responses.

They’ll be perched high above the congregation, seated at the newly renovated giant console that controls the instrument — through five keyboards of 56 notes each, foot pedals for 30 notes, and 115 stops.

Latry says he and the other organists will improvise their responses to the archbishop’s prompts — depending on their own and the congregation’s mood.

“Since it’s improvisation, you really need to feel the moment,” Latry told AP.

“When I am there, I will know what I am going to do. Before that, I simply have a few ideas but the ideas are not fully formed — because they will change depending on the atmosphere, the lighting, the people who’ll be down below, their reaction.”

The organ has a vast palette of sounds to play with. The deepest of its 7,952 pipes are as large as a human torso, producing a low rumbling sound. The smallest are no larger than a pen.

The painstaking re-tuning of the organ — after it was dismantled, cleaned and put back together — took around six months, with tuners working at night so they could tweak the notes in silence.

Before the fire, efforts to fund renovations of the nearly 900-year-old cathedral had been struggling. But that changed with the blaze.

“We had an outpouring of support,” says fund-raising committee member Michel Picaud. “I received 400 donations an hour, so my smartphone completely crashed.”

In all, 340,000 people from more than 150 countries donated 846 million euros (US$364 million), the public body in charge of Notre Dame’s restauration says. The support testifies to global affection for the monument that transcends frontiers and faiths.

“It’s something which belongs to everybody,” Picaud told AP. The nonprofit he leads, Friends of Notre-Dame de Paris, has raised $57 million from 50,000 international donors, most of them Americans.

“It’s not only a Parisian cathedral or monument,” he said. “All over the world, I think, people have the feeling that this is part of their — I would say — heritage.”

At the reopening, billionaire donors from France and beyond will rub shoulders with other guests far less fortunate.

They’ll include “the poorest among Parisians, all those who are helped by charitable associations and who will be several hundred inside the cathedral,” Rev. Olivier Ribadeau Dumas, Notre Dame’s rector, told AP.

Although construction work continues outside, the restored interiors look more magnificent than they have for generations.

The limestone walls are creamy and luminous, cleaned of years of accumulated grime. Vaulted ceilings that collapsed have been repaired. The archbishop and other members have new garments, from a designer who has also dressed Beyoncé, Rihanna and others. The cathedral also has new furniture, including a new altar to replace one crushed when the flaming spire collapsed.

The rector says “no one alive has seen the cathedral” as it looks now.

“The blondness of the stone, the brilliance of the paintings, the light through the stained glass windows, all the artworks, all the paintings, that were cleaned, the statues that were restored,” he said.

“All of that did not exist before the fire.”

AP journalists Thomas Adamson and Alex Turnbull contributed to this report.

For more of AP’s coverage on Notre Dame, visit https://apnews.com/hub/notre-dame-cathedral

PARIS (AP) — French Prime Minister Michel Barnier invoked a special constitutional tool on Monday to push through the controversial 2025 budget without a parliamentary vote. He said it was necessary to ensure stability at a time of deep political divisions.

Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally and the leftist France Unbowed announced they would file no-confidence motions in response, setting up a vote for as early as Wednesday that could bring down the fragile government.

The decision comes as France grapples with a fractured National Assembly following snap elections in June, which left no party or coalition with a majority. President Emmanuel Macron appointed Barnier in September to break the deadlock and tackle the country’s ballooning deficit. However, his austerity budget— featuring 40 billion euros in cuts and 20 billion euros in tax hikes — has been widely criticized, escalating tensions in the lower house.

The use of the tool, called Article 49.3, allows the government to pass legislation without a parliamentary vote but leaves it exposed to no-confidence motions. Opposition leaders argue that Barnier’s concessions, including scrapping an electricity tax hike, do not go far enough to address their concerns. Le Pen accused Barnier of ignoring her party’s demands.

“Everyone must shoulder their responsibilities,” she said.

The political standoff has unsettled financial markets, with borrowing costs rising sharply amid fears of prolonged instability. Barnier warned of “serious turbulence” if the budget isn’t passed, but critics dismissed his remarks as fear-mongering.

If the no-confidence motion succeeds, Macron will remain president but will need to appoint a new prime minister to steer legislation through the fractured assembly. The uncertainty threatens to deepen France’s economic troubles and reverberate across the eurozone.