Former French President Nicholas Sarkozy Enters Paris Prison to Begin Sentence

Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy entered a prison in Paris on Tuesday to begin serving a 5-year sentence for a criminal conspiracy to finance his 2007 election campaign with funds from Libya—making him the first former leader of modern France to go to prison.

Sarkozy will serve his sentence in solitary confinement at the notorious La Santé prison, after he was convicted last month.

The 70-year-old was greeted by hundreds of supporters as he walked out of his Paris home earlier in the day hand in hand with his wife, Italian former supermodel-turned-singer Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, before the couple embraced and the former president was taken by car to the prison. 

Sarkozy pleaded not guilty and is appealing the verdict. He contests both the conviction and a judge’s unusual decision to incarcerate him pending appeal. 

On his way to prison, Sarkozy released a statement on social media declaring that “an innocent man” is being incarcerated.

“I will continue to denounce this judicial scandal,” he wrote. “The truth will prevail.”

Plans to Read and Write

Sarkozy, who as president lived in the Élysée Palace from 2007 to 2012, told Le Figaro newspaper that he would take three books to prison—the maximum allowed—including Alexandre Dumas’s two-volume classic, “The Count of Monte Cristo,″ in which protagonist Edmond Dantès is falsely imprisoned after being betrayed by his jealous friends and a corrupt official, before escaping and seeking revenge.

He also picked a biography of Jesus Christ, and said he plans to write a book while in prison, in common with other jailed politicians.

“I’m not afraid of prison. I’ll hold my head high, including in front of the doors of La Santé,” he told La Tribune Dimanche newspaper last week. “I’ll fight till the end.”

Sarkozy, regarded as a center-right politician when he led the Union for a Popular Movement party, has maintained that he is the victim of “a plot” staged by people linked to the Libyan government and denounced the Sept. 25 verdict as a “scandal.”

La Santé prison has held some of the most high-profile inmates in the country since the 19th century, including Capt. Alfred Dreyfus, wrongly convicted of treason, and the Venezuelan terrorist known as Carlos the Jackal, who carried out several attacks on French soil and became a media symbol of 1970s terrorism.

More recently, Jean-Luc Brunel, the former head of a French model agency who was accused of supplying young girls to now-deceased sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, was found hanged in his cell at La Santé in February 2022.

Solitary Confinement

If, as expected, Sarkozy is an inmate in the so-called VIP section for convicted well-known personalities, he will have his own room in one of 18 identical 9-square-meter cells in a wing separated from other general prison inmates.

Sarkozy will be kept away from all other prisoners for security reasons. Solitary confinement implies that the former president will never see other inmates and will spend most of his time alone in his cell.

He will be allowed to go outdoors one hour per day alone in the prison yard and to get three visits per week from his family, his lawyers said, adding that he intends to write a book about his prison experience.

One of his lawyers, Christophe Ingrain, denounced what he called “a serious injustice.”

“It’s a very difficult time, but the president has stood strong,” Ingrain said. “He doesn’t complain, hasn’t asked for anything, no special treatment.”

Reaction

As Sarkozy departed his home for prison, hundreds of supporters applauded and chanted “Nicolas, Nicolas,” while some sang the French national anthem and waved the tricolor flag.

Embattled President Emmanuel Macron hosted Sarkozy at the presidential palace last week, explaining it was “normal on a human level” to receive one of his predecessors in this context.

On Tuesday, Macron declined to comment on a criminal justice decision. “Nevertheless, it’s normal that the image of a president being imprisoned … may prompt comments,” he said.

“We must distinguish emotion, including the legitimate emotion of relatives and part of the country … and the proper functioning of justice,” Macron added.

Sarkozy has been retired from front-line politics for years but remains an influential figure, especially in conservative circles.

In an unprecedented move, the Paris court ruled last month that Sarkozy must begin his sentence without waiting for his appeal to be heard, due to “the seriousness of the disruption to public order caused by the offense.”

Following his trial, the court found that Sarkozy, as a presidential candidate and interior minister, used his position “to prepare corruption at the highest level” from 2005 to 2007 to finance his presidential campaign with funds from Libya—then led by longtime ruler Moammar Gadhafi.

Under the ruling, Sarkozy is able to file a request for release to the appeals court only once behind bars, and judges can take up to two months to process such applications.

His lawyers said Tuesday they filed an immediate request for his release once he entered the prison.

The Associated Press contributed to this report