{"id":129,"date":"2025-11-11T15:03:23","date_gmt":"2025-11-11T15:03:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/example.ng\/news\/?p=129"},"modified":"2025-11-11T15:03:23","modified_gmt":"2025-11-11T15:03:23","slug":"former-president-sarkozy-released-from-prison-after-three-weeks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/example.ng\/news\/2025\/11\/11\/former-president-sarkozy-released-from-prison-after-three-weeks\/","title":{"rendered":"Former President Sarkozy Released From Prison After Three Weeks"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Former President Sarkozy Released From Prison After Three Weeks<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy<\/a> has been released from jail after being convicted and sentenced to a five-year prison term for taking part in a criminal conspiracy<\/a>. He was released on Monday, exactly three weeks after being in jail.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He will be subject to strict judicial supervision and barred from leaving France ahead of an appeal trial scheduled for next year.<\/p>\n

On 21 October, the former centre-right president was sentenced to five years for conspiring to fund his 2007 election campaign with money from late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.<\/p>\n

His legal team immediately filed a request seeking his release.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“Energy is focused solely on the single goal of proving my innocence.” written by Sarkozy on his social media after the release.<\/p>\n

“The truth will prevail… The end of the story is yet to be written.”<\/p>\n

Sarkozy’s car was seen leaving La Sant\u00e9 prison in Paris just before 15:00 (14:00 GMT), less than an hour-and-a-half after a court agreed to his early release.\u00a0<\/b>Soon after, he was seen arriving at his home in western Paris.<\/p>\n

Christophe Ingrain, one of Sarkozy’s lawyers, hailed his client’s release as “a step forward” and said they would now be preparing for the appeal trial expected in March.<\/p>\n

One condition of Sarkozy’s release is that he does not contact any other witnesses in the so-called “Libyan dossier” or any justice ministry employees.<\/p>\n

Justice Minister G\u00e9rald Darmanin visited him while he was incarcerated. The visit prompted 30 French lawyers to file a complaint against Darmanin, highlighting what they said was a conflict of interest as Darmanin was a former colleague and friend of Sarkozy’s.<\/p>\n

Over a Video link on Monday morning, while he was speaking to a court in Paris, Sarkozy described his time in solitary confinement as “gruelling” and “a nightmare”.<\/p>\n

He said he had never had the “mad idea” of asking Gaddafi for money and stated he would “never admit to something I haven’t done”.<\/p>\n

Sarkozy also paid tribute to the prison staff who had made his time there “bearable”. “They have shown exceptional humanity,” he said.<\/p>\n

Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, Sarkozy’s wife, who is a model and singer and two of the former president’s sons were present in the courtroom to support him.<\/p>\n

Since World War II, Sarkozy is the first French ex-leader to be sent to prison, except for the collaborationist leader Philippe P\u00e9tain, who was jailed for treason in 1945.<\/p>\n

Since entering prison, Sarkozy has been held in a cell in the isolation wing.<\/p>\n

He had a toilet, a shower, a desk, a small electric hob and a small TV \u2013 for which he paid a monthly fee of \u20ac14 (\u00a312)\u00a0 and the right to a small fridge.<\/p>\n

He could receive information from the outside world with family visits, as well as written and phone contact, but was, in effect, in solitary confinement, along with one hour per day for exercising, which he did by himself in the wing’s segregated courtyard.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Former President Sarkozy Released From Prison After Three Weeks Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy has been released from jail after being convicted and sentenced to a five-year prison term for taking part in a criminal conspiracy. He was released on Monday, exactly three weeks after being in jail.\u00a0 He will be subject to strict judicial […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":130,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/example.ng\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/example.ng\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/example.ng\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/example.ng\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/example.ng\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/example.ng\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":131,"href":"https:\/\/example.ng\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129\/revisions\/131"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/example.ng\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/example.ng\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/example.ng\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/example.ng\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}