Sarkozy goes to jail on election financing charges

Nicolas Sarkozy became France’s first former president when he was sentenced to five years in prison for conspiring to use Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi’s money to finance his presidential campaign.

(No former French leader has been imprisoned since World War II Nazi collaborator Philippe Pétain was imprisoned on charges of treason in 1945.

Sarkozy, who was president from 2007 to 2012, appealed his sentence served at La Santé prison. He will occupy a small cell in the prison’s isolation wing.

More than 100 people clapped and shouted “Nicholas!” He was holding the hand of his wife, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, as they left their villa in the 16th arrondissement of Paris.

His son Louis, 28, appealed to supporters to show their support, while another son Pierre asked for a message of love: “There is nothing else.”

Nicolas Sarkozy, 70, was driven towards the entrance of the notoriously overcrowded 19th-century prison in the Montparnasse district south of the Seine River at 9:40 am (07:40 GMT), with dozens of police officers blocking off most of the surrounding streets.

He continues to protest his innocence in the controversial Libyan funding case and, as he sits in prison, posted a message on

“With firm force I say (to the French people) that it is not the former president they are imprisoning this morning, but an innocent person,” he wrote. “Do not pity me, for my wife and children are by my side, but this morning I feel deep sorrow for France, humiliated by her will of revenge.”

Shortly after Sarkozy was jailed, his lawyer Christophe Ingrain said a request for his release had not been received. Ingrain said there was nothing that could justify his imprisonment: “He will be in prison for at least three weeks or a month.”

Sarkozy said he did not want to receive special treatment at La Sante prison, although other prisoners were kept in quarantine for their own safety because they were notorious drug dealers or had been convicted of terrorist crimes.

Sarkozy’s cell in the prison’s isolation wing is believed to be on the top floor and measures between 9 and 11 square meters (95 and 120 square feet). There had previously been talk of him serving a term in another section for “vulnerable people” where other VIPs had been jailed in the past.

He will have a toilet, shower, desk, small electric stove and small TV, for which he will have to pay a fee of €14 (£12) per month, and will also have the right to use a small refrigerator.

Former presidents have the right to provide external information, visit family members, and communicate in writing and by phone.

However, he is virtually confined to solitary confinement where he is only allowed to exercise for one hour a day, and he exercises alone in a separate yard.

“The conditions of detention in the isolation unit are quite strict,” Flavie Rault, former deputy director of La Santé, told BFMTV. “You are always alone. The only contact you have is with prison staff. For security reasons you are not allowed to meet other prisoners and there is a kind of social isolation that makes life difficult.”

Late last week, Sarkozy was received at the Elysee Palace by President Emmanuel Macron, who told reporters on Monday that “at a human level, it is normal to receive one of your predecessors in that context.”

In a further step of official support for the former president, Justice Minister Gerald Darmanin said he would visit Sarkozy in prison as part of his role to ensure his safety and the proper functioning of prisons.

“I cannot be insensitive to a man’s pain,” he added.

Since leaving office in 2012, Sarkozy has been dogged by a criminal investigation and was forced to wear an electronic tag on his ankle for several months after being found guilty last December of trying to bribe a magistrate to obtain confidential information about a separate case.

Late next month, France’s highest administrative court is expected to rule on Sarkozy’s appeal of his six-month prison sentence in another illegal campaign financing case known as the Bygmalion affair.

Before arriving at La Santé prison, Sarkozy gave a series of media interviews, telling La Tribune: “I am not afraid of prison. I will hold my head high, including the prison doors.”

Sarkozy has always denied wrongdoing in the case involving claims that his 2007 presidential campaign was financed with millions of euros in Libyan cash.

The former center-right leader was cleared of charges of personally taking the money, but was found guilty of criminal involvement with two close associates, Brice Hortefeux and Claude Guéant, who played a role in financing the Libyan’s secret campaign.

The two spoke with Gaddafi’s intelligence chief and brother-in-law at a meeting arranged by a Franco-Lebanese broker named Ziad Thiakedine, who died in Lebanon shortly before Sarkozy’s conviction in 2005.

Sarkozy, who has appealed, is still considered not guilty but was told he should be jailed given the “exceptional seriousness of the facts”.

Sarkozy said he would take two books with him when he goes to prison. One is the Life of Jesus and the Count of Monte Cristo, written by Jean-Christian Petitfils, and Alexandre Dumas was wrongfully imprisoned and presented to prosecutors. It is a classic story about a man who escapes to seek revenge.