Sarkozy heads to jail over campaign financing

Nicolas Sarkozy will become the first French former president to go to prison, being sentenced to five years in prison for conspiring to finance his election campaign with money from former Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

No former French leader has been behind bars since World War II Nazi collaborationist leader Philippe Pétain was imprisoned for treason in 1945.

Sarkozy, who was president from 2007 to 2012, appealed his sentence at La Santé prison, where he will remain in a cell of about 9 square meters (95 sq ft) in the prison’s isolation wing.

More than 100 people stood outside the prison after his son Louis, 28, appealed to supporters for support.

The other son, Pierre, asked for a message of love: “Nothing else, please.”

Nicolas Sarkozy, 70, was due to arrive at the infamous 19th-century prison in the Montparnasse district south of the Seine River at 10:00 am (08:00 GMT). He continues to protest his innocence in the highly controversial Libya money affair.

Sarkozy said he did not want special treatment at the notorious La Santé prison, but was placed in isolation for his own safety because other inmates were notorious drug dealers or convicted of terrorist crimes.

Other than Philippe Pétain, the only other former French head of state imprisoned was King Louis XVI before his execution in January 1793. It was Louis.

His cell will have a toilet, shower, desk and a small television. He will be allowed one hour a day to exercise alone.

He was received by President Emmanuel Macron at the Élysée Palace at the end of last week, and Macron told reporters on Monday that “in this context, it is normal for me to acknowledge one of my predecessors on a human level.”

In a further measure of official support for the former president, Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin said he would visit Sarkozy in prison as part of his role in ensuring his security and the proper functioning of the prison.

“I cannot remain insensitive to a man’s distress,” he added.

Sarkozy gave a series of media interviews before arriving at La Santé prison, telling La Tribune: “I am not afraid of prison. I will hold my head high, including at the prison gates.”

Sarkozy has always denied wrongdoing in a case involving allegations that his 2007 presidential campaign was financed by millions of euros from Libya.

The former center-right leader was cleared of personally receiving the money but was convicted of complicity with two close aides, Brice Hortefeux and Claude Guéant, to talk to Libyans about secret campaign financing.

The two men met Gaddafi’s intelligence chief and his brother-in-law in 2005, at a meeting arranged by a French-Lebanese intermediary named Ziad Tiakeddine, who died in Lebanon shortly before Sarkozy was convicted.

Sarkozy, who has appealed, is still presumed innocent but has been told he must go to prison due to the “extraordinary seriousness of the facts”.

Sarkozy said he would take two books to prison: The Life of Jesus and The Count of Monte Christo, the story of a man who was wrongfully imprisoned and escaped to take revenge on his prosecutors.