Nicolas Sarkozy says life in prison is ‘gruelling’ and ‘a nightmare’ | Nicolas Sarkozy

Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy said his time in prison was “exhausting” and a “nightmare” as he attended a court hearing via video link demanding he be released and serve his sentence at home.

Sarkozy, wearing a dark blue suit, appeared on camera from prison on Monday, sitting with his lawyers. He told the court: “I want to pay tribute to all the prison staff who were extremely humane and made this nightmare bearable – because it is a nightmare.”

Sarkozy entered La Santé prison in Paris on October 21 after a Paris court sentenced him to five years in prison for criminal conspiracy for a scheme to obtain funds from the regime of late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi for the 2007 presidential election campaign.

He appealed the decision but judges ruled that due to the “extraordinary severity” of his conviction, he should remain in prison while his appeal process continued.

Sarkozy, who served as the right-wing president of France between 2007 and 2012, is the first former president of an EU country to be imprisoned and the first post-war French leader to go behind bars.

Sarkozy told the court from prison: “I had no thought or intention to ask for any financing from Mr. Gaddafi… I will never confess to something I did not do… I never thought that I would be in prison at the age of 70. This is an ordeal imposed on me. I confess it is difficult, very difficult. It leaves a mark on every prisoner because it is grueling.”

He said he would not contact any defendants or witnesses in the case. “I am French, I love my country, my family is in France. This ordeal has caused them a lot of pain.”

Sitting next to Sarkozy in the prison video link room, his lawyer Jean-Michel Darrois said: “Being in isolation has been very difficult for him.” He said about Sarkozy: “He is a strong, solid and brave man and this detention has caused him great pain.”

In court, Christophe Ingrain, one of the lawyers who visited Sarkozy every day, said Sarkozy would be safer outside prison than inside: “He faced death threats, heard screams at night and heard the emergency response in a neighboring cell after a prisoner harmed himself.”

Prosecutor Damien Brunet requested that Sarkozy’s release request be accepted. The court will announce its decision on Monday afternoon.

When Sarkozy was imprisoned three weeks ago, he organized a highly controlled exit from his home in the west of the capital, where he and his wife, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, greeted dozens of supporters on the street outside. Bruni-Sarkozy was in court with Sarkozy’s two eldest sons for a release request hearing on Monday morning.

For his own security, Sarkozy is being kept in a solitary cell of approximately 9 square meters with his own shower and toilet. Two guards occupy the neighboring cell to ensure his safety. French weekly news, Le PointHe reported that he ate only yoghurt in prison because he was afraid that he might have been spat on. According to the magazine’s report, citing unnamed sources, he was offered the opportunity to cook but refused.

Sarkozy’s social media account published a video containing a pile of letters, postcards and packages said to have been sent to him last week, including a collage, a chocolate bar and a book. A statement was made on his account: “No letter will remain unanswered.” “The end of the story hasn’t been written yet.”

Sarkozy imprisoned the biography of Jesus and Alexandre Dumas’s novel The Count of Monte Cristo, which tells the story of an innocent man sentenced to prison but escapes to take revenge.

During Sarkozy’s three-month trial, the prosecutor told the court that Sarkozy had entered “a Faustian corruption pact with one of the most unspeakable dictators of the last 30 years.”

Sarkozy has denied any wrongdoing and said he was not part of a criminal conspiracy to obtain election financing from Libya.

He was acquitted of charges of corruption, misuse of Libyan public funds and illegal election campaign financing. After the prosecutor objected to these acquittals, Sarkozy will be tried again next year on all charges, including conspiracy.

Although allegations of a secret campaign finance deal with the Libyan regime constitute the biggest corruption case Sarkozy has ever faced, Sarkozy had already been convicted in two separate cases and was deprived of France’s highest decoration, the Legion of Honour.

Sarkozy became the first former French president to be forced to wear an electronic tag after being previously convicted of corruption and influence peddling through illegal attempts to gain favors from judges. In this case, he was sentenced to one year in prison, but he was able to serve this sentence with an electronic tag attached to his ankle. He wore this tag for three months before being paroled.