*Will Be In Solitary Confinement
Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy has arrived at La Santé prison in Paris today , 21 October, to start a five-year prison term, Reuters reports.
Sarkozy, who was the conservative President of France between 2007 and 2012, was handed a five-year jail term in September for criminal conspiracy over a plan for late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi to fund his electoral campaign.
Sarkozy’s lawyer Christophe Ingrain said the ex-president will remain in solitary confinement in prison for at least three weeks to a month, after confirming a request had been immediately filed for his release, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports.
The Paris appeals court in theory has two months to decide whether to free him pending an appeals trial, but the delay is usually shorter.
Sarkozy walked out of his home hand-in-hand with his singer wife, Carla Bruni, and left in a car escorted by police on motorbikes.
The ex-president was reported by the Associated Press (AP) as saying “an innocent man is being locked up” while on his way to prison.
Sarkozy has faced a flurry of legal woes since losing his re-election bid in 2012.
He has been convicted in two separate trials. In one, he served a sentence for graft under house arrest while wearing an electronic ankle tag, which was removed after several months in May, AFP reports.
In the so-called “Libyan case”, prosecutors said his aides, acting in Sarkozy’s name, struck a deal with the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2005 to illegally fund his victorious presidential election bid two years later.
Investigators believe that in return, Gaddafi was promised help to restore his international image after Tripoli was blamed for the 1988 bombing of a passenger jet over Lockerbie, Scotland, and another over Niger in 1989, killing hundreds of passengers.
The court convicted him of criminal conspiracy over the plan.
The son of a Hungarian immigrant, Sarkozy became President in 2007, pledging to shake things up with pro-business reforms that would reinvigorate France’s stagnant economy and elevate the country to the top table of global players, Reuters reports.
Those efforts were quickly upended by the 2008-2009 economic crisis, and voters gave him little credit for raising the retirement age to 62 from 60 and loosening rules requiring a maximum 35-hour work week.
The sentencing of Sarkozy reflected a shift in France’s approach to white-collar crime. In the 1990s and 2000s, many convicted politicians avoided prison altogether, Reuters reports.
Despite his legal troubles, Sarkozy’s political influence has proved resilient as French society has shifted to the right.
President Emmanuel Macron, who had warm relations with Sarkozy and Bruni, said on Monday he had met Sarkozy ahead of his incarceration.
Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin said he would visit him in prison.
That angered left-wing politicians who said Macron and Darmanin were breaching judicial independence.
*PHOTO CAPTION: Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy (2nd right) waves to supporters as he leaves his house with his wife, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy in Paris, en route prison, 21 October 2025. Photograph: Benoît Tessier/Reuters.
