Kamsiyochukwu Mbamalu
France’s former president Nicolas Sarkozy is set to begin a five-year prison sentence on Tuesday, October 21, after being convicted of criminal conspiracy in connection with alleged Libyan funding for his 2007 presidential campaign, making him the first ex-head of an EU nation to serve time behind bars.
Sarkozy, who led France from 2007 to 2012, was found guilty in late September over a scheme involving late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s regime, which prosecutors said helped finance his electoral victory. The 70-year-old, who has denounced the ruling as an “injustice,” has appealed the decision but will still be incarcerated at Paris’s La Santé Prison.
Sarkozy’s conviction is the latest in a series of legal troubles that have dogged him since leaving office in 2012. He has already been found guilty in two other cases, including a corruption trial in which he tried to obtain confidential information from a judge.
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According to sources, Sarkozy will likely be placed in a nine-square-metre solitary confinement cell to ensure he avoids interaction with other inmates or being secretly photographed with smuggled mobile phones. He will be allowed out of his cell for a daily walk alone in a small courtyard.
Sarkozy’s legal team is expected to immediately request his release once he arrives at the facility, and the appeals court will have two months to review that request. The former president’s imprisonment marks a historic moment, making him the first French leader to be jailed since Philippe Pétain, the Nazi collaborationist head of the Vichy regime during World War II.
