The former French president Nicolas Sarkozy has entered a prison in Paris, after a court sentenced him to five years for criminal conspiracy over a scheme to obtain election campaign funds from the regime of the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.
France’s rightwing president between 2007 and 2012 is the first former head of an EU country to serve time in prison, and the first French postwar leader to be jailed.
Sarkozy, who has appealed against his conviction, had sought to avoid being photographed at the gates of La Santé prison in the south of Paris. Instead, he organised a highly stage-managed departure from his home in the west of the capital where he walked with his wife, the singer Carla Bruni, to greet crowds gathered in the street outside.
First his children, led by Giulia, his 14-year-old daughter with Bruni, walked slowly from his home to greet well-wishers. Louis Sarkozy, one of Sarkozy’s sons, who is preparing to run for mayor in Menton on the French Riviera next spring, had called for supporters to demonstrate in the street. Some shouted “Nicolas! Nicolas!” At the same time, Sarkozy’s social media account published a message in which he said: “I am innocent”, and that his imprisonment was a “judicial scandal”.
Sarkozy was found guilty last month of criminal conspiracy over a scheme to seek funding from Gaddafi’s regime for his victorious 2007 French presidential election campaign. The lead judge, Nathalie Gavarino, justified the five-year prison sentence by saying the facts of the case were of an “exceptional gravity” and “likely to undermine citizens’ trust”.
Sarkozy’s lawyers filed a motion for his release as soon as he entered the jail, and the appeals court has two months to examine the request. In such cases, the court can order a release under judicial supervision or home arrest with an ankle tag. The court could also decide against letting out a prisoner if, for example, it deems this the only way to prevent evidence-tampering or witness intimidation.
During the three-month trial, the public prosecutor had told the court that Sarkozy entered into a “Faustian pact of corruption with one of the most unspeakable dictators of the last 30 years” to gain election funding from Gaddafi.
Sarkozy was acquitted of three separate charges of corruption, misuse of Libyan public funds and illegal election campaign funding.
At his trial, Sarkozy denied wrongdoing and said he was not part of a criminal conspiracy to seek election funding from Libya. He has appealed against his conviction. A new trial is expected in about six months, but the nature of Sarkozy’s prison sentence means he must go to jail as his appeal process plays out.
Sarkozy told Le Figaro that he had packed family photos and three books, as permitted for the first week, including a biography of Jesus as well as The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas’s novel in which an innocent man is sentenced to jail but escapes to take revenge. He said he would use his time in prison to write a book.
He is expected to be held in solitary confinement for his own security, in an individual cell of about 9sq metres with his own shower and toilet. He will have no mobile phone, but will have a small television. A security-controlled phone line will allow him contact with his lawyers and family. He is expected to have the right to two visits a week from family. He told Le Figaro that he had been advised to take earplugs. “At night you hear lots of noise, shouting, screaming,” he said.
Sarkozy is the first French leader to be incarcerated since Philippe Pétain, the Nazi collaborationist who was jailed after the second world war.
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A trade union of prison wardens protested outside the prison against overcrowding in French jails, where many inmates have mattresses on the floor, unlike Sarkozy.
Six out of 10 people in France believe the prison sentence to be “fair”, according to a survey of more than 1,000 adults conducted by pollster Elabe.
But Sarkozy still enjoys support on the French right. Emmanuel Macron welcomed Sarkozy to the Élysée Palace on Friday, a government source said, a decision the French president defended on Monday. “It was normal, on a human level, for me to receive one of my predecessors in this context,” the current French president told reporters.
Olivier Faure, the head of the Socialist party, criticised Macron for inviting Sarkozy to the Elysée before he entered prison. “This is a pressure on the justice system. It’s giving the feeling that there are some accused who are by nature different to others,” he said.
The justice minister, Gérald Darmanin, a political protege of Sarkozy, said he would visit Sarkozy in prison in his ministerial role.
Some notorious inmates have spent time at La Santé, including the Venezuelan militant Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, also known as Carlos the Jackal, who has since been moved.
More recently, the French model agent Jean-Luc Brunel, a close associate of the convicted US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, was found dead in his cell at La Santé in 2022. He had been charged with the rape of minors.
