Nicolas Sarkozy is the first former French president to be imprisoned for the Libya campaign scandal
Nicolas Sarkozy is the first former president of France to be jailed since World War II. He was found guilty of illegally supporting his 2007 campaign.
Nicolas Sarkozy, the former president of France, has started his five-year prison term after being found guilty of plotting to use money from the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi to pay for his election campaign in 2007. This is a historic event: he is the first French ex-president to go to jail since Philippe Pétain, who led France during World War II, was jailed for treason in 1945.
Sarkozy, who was president of France from 2007 to 2012, arrived at La Santé jail in Paris on Tuesday morning under heavy security. He will be locked up in a 9-square-meter cell by himself. Still saying he is innocent, the 70-year-old man wrote a defiant message on social media before going into the facility: “I have no doubt.” The truth will win out. But the price will have been so painful. He also said, “Don’t feel sorry for me… but this morning I feel deep sorrow for a France that is ashamed by a desire for revenge.”
A call for unity from Sarkozy’s son Louis caused large groups of fans to gather outside his home in Paris’s 16th district. Pierre, another son, told them to send “a message of love—nothing else, please.” Even though Sarkozy is a famous person, he has apparently not asked for any special treatment in prison. He has been put in isolation for his own safety because the facility is home to notorious drug dealers and terrorists.
Sarkozy will have a bed, a desk, a toilet, a shower, and a small TV in his cell. He will also be able to work out alone for an hour every day. He recently told La Tribune that he wasn’t scared of going to jail and that he would “keep his head held high, even at the prison gates.”
Sarkozy was found guilty because it was said that millions of euros in illegal Libyan funds were sent to his 2007 campaign through people with ties to Gaddafi’s government. The court didn’t find him guilty of getting the money himself, but he was found guilty of criminal association with Brice Hortefeux and Claude Guéant, two close friends. Both men are said to have met with Gaddafi’s intelligence chief in 2005. The meetings were set up by Ziad Tiakeddine, a Franco-Lebanese fixer who died not long before the decision.
Even though Sarkozy filed an appeal, which means he is still formally presumed innocent, the court told him to start serving his sentence right away because of what it called “the exceptional seriousness of the facts.”
President Emmanuel Macron met Sarkozy at the Élysée Palace before he went to jail. Macron later told reporters that it was “normal that on a human level” he should meet with Sarkozy. Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin also cared about the former president’s health and said he would visit Sarkozy in jail to “ensure his safety and the proper functioning of the facility.” He also said, “I cannot be indifferent to a man’s distress.”
Sarkozy has brought two books with him to prison: a biography of Jesus and The Count of Monte Cristo, which is a classic story about a guy who is wrongfully jailed but wins in the end. Many people see the former president’s choice of reading as a sign of his continued defiance and desire to clear his name.
