First French Ex-President To Go To Jail For Campaign Finance Conspiracy

First French Ex-President To Go To Jail For Campaign Finance Conspiracy

The first former French president to be imprisoned, Nicolas Sarkozy, begins a five-year term for allegedly plotting to use funds from the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi to finance his election campaign.

Since Philippe Pétain, the Nazi collaborationist leader of World War Two, was imprisoned for treason in 1945, no former French leader has been executed.

In his appeal, Sarkozy, the former president from 2007 to 2012, has been sentenced to a small cell in the isolation wing of La Santé prison.

Holding his wife Carla Bruni-Sarkozy by the hand, he walked out of his mansion in Paris’s upscale 16th arrondissement to acclaim and cries of “Nicolas!”

His son Louis, 28, had appealed to supporters for a show of support, while another son, Pierre, called for a message of love – “nothing else, please”.

In the Montparnasse district south of the River Seine, at 09:40 local time (07:40 GMT), 70-year-old Nicolas Sarkozy was driven through the entrance of the infamously overcrowded 19th-Century prison, while scores of police officers blocked off most of the surrounding streets.

As he was being driven to the jail, he wrote on X, “I have no doubt,” continuing to proclaim his innocence in the very contentious Libyan money case. The truth will win out. However, the cost will have been devastating.

“With unwavering strength I tell [the French people] it is not a former president they are locking up this morning – it is an innocent man,” he wrote. “Do not feel sorry for me because my wife and my children are by my side… but this morning I feel deep sorrow for a France humiliated by a will for revenge.”

Christophe Ingrain, Sarkozy’s attorney, announced that a request for his release had been made shortly after he was taken into custody. Mr. Ingrain stated that nothing warranted his incarceration and that “he’ll be inside for at least three weeks or a month.”

Despite being placed in the isolation wing of La Santé jail for his own safety because other convicts have been found guilty of terror offenses or are notorious drug traffickers, Sarkozy has stated that he does not desire any special treatment there.