The former French president Nicolas Sarkozy has entered a prison in Paris, after a court sentenced him to five years for criminal conspiracy over a scheme to obtain election campaign funds from the regime of the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.
Sarkozy, the rightwing president of France between 2007 and 2012, is the first former head of an EU country to serve time in prison, and the first French postwar leader to be jailed.
Sarkozy, who has appealed against his conviction, had sought to avoid being photographed at the gates of La Santé prison in the south of Paris. Instead, he organised a highly stage-managed departure from his home in the west of the capital where he walked with his wife, the singer Carla Bruni, to greet crowds gathered in the street outside.
First his children, led by Giulia, his 14-year-old daughter with Bruni, walked slowly from his home to greet well-wishers. Louis Sarkozy, one of Sarkozy’s sons, who is preparing to run for mayor in Menton on the French Riviera next spring, had called for supporters to demonstrate in the street. Some shouted “Nicolas! Nicolas!” At the same time, Sarkozy’s social media account published a message in which he said: “I am innocent”, and that his imprisonment was a “judicial scandal”.
Sarkozy was found guilty last month of criminal conspiracy over a scheme to seek funding from Gaddafi’s regime for his victorious 2007 French presidential election campaign.
The lead judge, Nathalie Gavarino, justified the five-year prison sentence by saying the facts of the case were of an “exceptional gravity” and “likely to undermine citizens’ trust”.
During the three-month trial, 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.
MNA/
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