Former French President, Nicolas Sarkozy is set to begin serving a jail term on Tuesday, marking the first time a former head of state of an EU country will be incarcerated.
The 69-year-old ex-leader was convicted in late September for criminal conspiracy linked to a scheme involving late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, who allegedly financed his 2007 presidential campaign.
Sarkozy, who governed France from 2007 to 2012, has denounced the ruling as an “injustice” and filed an appeal. He is expected to be held at La Santé Prison in Paris.
“If they absolutely want me to sleep in prison, I will sleep in prison — but with my head held high,” he told reporters after his September 25 verdict.
According to prison staff, Sarkozy is likely to be kept in solitary confinement, in a nine-square-metre cell, to avoid contact with other inmates or the risk of being photographed with smuggled mobile phones. He will be allowed a brief daily walk alone in a small yard.
It remains unclear how long the former president will remain behind bars.
Presiding Judge Nathalie Gavarino described his offences as being of “exceptional gravity” and ordered incarceration even if he appealed. Sarkozy’s legal team is expected to immediately seek his conditional release, which the appeals court could review within two months.
Depending on the court’s decision, he could remain imprisoned or be released under judicial supervision or house arrest with an electronic ankle tag.
Sarkozy has faced a string of legal troubles since losing re-election in 2012. Earlier this year, he served part of a graft sentence for attempting to obtain confidential information from a judge, which he completed under house arrest.
In the “Libyan case,” prosecutors claimed his aides, acting under his direction, made a 2005 deal with Gaddafi to illegally finance Sarkozy’s 2007 campaign in exchange for restoring Libya’s international reputation after the Lockerbie and Niger airliner bombings in the late 1980s.
The court, however, did not find proof that Sarkozy personally received or used the Libyan funds. He was acquitted of charges including embezzlement of Libyan public money, passive corruption, and illicit campaign financing.
Following his earlier corruption conviction, Sarkozy was stripped of the Legion of Honour, France’s highest national award.
A recent Elabe poll shows that six in ten French citizens view the latest ruling as fair. Despite this, Sarkozy maintains strong support among conservatives. His son, Louis Sarkozy, who is running for mayor in southern France, urged supporters to gather outside his father’s home on Tuesday morning to show solidarity.
The case has also sparked tension in the judiciary. Judge Gavarino reportedly received death threats after the verdict, prompting President Emmanuel Macron to condemn the harassment as “unacceptable.”
La Santé Prison, one of France’s most notorious facilities, has held several high-profile inmates over the years, including Ilich Ramirez Sanchez (Carlos the Jackal) and Jean-Luc Brunel, the late model agent linked to Jeffrey Epstein, who was found dead in his cell in 2022.
Sarkozy now joins that list — a former president serving time in a prison once known for housing criminals, militants, and disgraced elites.