Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy ordered to go to jail next week

The former French president Nicolas Sarkozy has been ordered to go to jail in Paris next week after a court last month sentenced him to five years in prison for criminal conspiracy over a scheme to obtain election campaign funds from the regime of the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

Sarkozy, who was the rightwing president of France between 2007 and 2012, was summoned to meet state prosecutors on Monday. They told him he must present himself at the entrance of LaSanté prison in the south of Paris on 21 October to begin his sentence.

The 70-year-old will be the first French postwar leader and the first former head of a European Union country to go to jail. He had already become the first former French head of state forced to wear an electronic tag after being convicted in a separate case of corruption and influence peddlingover illegal attempts to secure favours from a judge. In that case, he was given a one-year jail term but was able to serve it with an electronic tag worn around the ankle. He wore the tag for three months before being granted conditional release.

Sarkozy, who denied wrongdoing and having being part of a criminal conspiracy to seek election funding from Libya for his victorious 2007 presidential campaign, has appealed against his conviction. A new trial is expected in about six months. But the nature of Sarkozy’s prison sentence means he must go to jail as his appeal process plays out.

Sarkozy was reported to have hosted 100 friends and former collaborators in Paris last week at a sort of goodbye party before going to prison. Le Figarosaid he had told guests he was innocent and should never have been found guilty. Talking about prison, he reportedly said: “I will ask for no advantages. When there is a cross to bear, you must bear it to the end.”

Sarkozy is expected to have his own individual prison cell, with one hour’s exercise a day and three visits a week.

La Santé prison has held some of Frances’s most famous prisoners in its 158-year history, including the terrorist Carlos the Jackal and the war criminal Maurice Papon. Sarkozy is likely to be held in a special wing for vulnerable prisoners, which some call the VIP wing.

It affords more privacy to prisoners, who are placed in individual cells of 9 sq metres and kept separate from other prisoners when exercising. Patrick Balkany, the former rightwing mayor of Levallois-Perret and one-time friend of Sarkozy, was held in that wing in 2019 after a conviction for tax fraud. He described to Paris Match how the isolation was psychologically demanding, but it spared him from being photographed by other prisoners.

Sarkozy was found guilty of criminal conspiracy but acquitted of three separate charges of corruption, misuse of Libyan public funds and illegal election campaign funding. The public prosecutor had told the court that Sarkozy entered into a “Faustian pact of corruption with one of the most unspeakable dictators of the last 30 years” to gain election funding from Gaddafi.

Outside court, after judges handed down their guilty verdict, Sarkozy had said: “If they absolutely want me to sleep in jail, I will sleep in jail, but with my head held high.”

After he enters jail, Sarkozy has the right, like any prisoner, to petition the appeals court for his release. But he will remain in prison until judges give their decision, which could take about two months.