Paris, (EFE).- France’s former president Nicolas Sarkozy entered the Parisian prison of La Santé on Tuesday to begin his five-year sentence for conspiring to fund his 2007 election campaign with money from late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.
Sarkozy, 70, left his home in Paris’ exclusive 16th arrondissement at around 9.10 am local time, holding hands with his wife, Carla Bruni, and accompanied by his children and siblings, before getting into a car for the prison in the 14th arrondissement.
While on his way to prison, the right-wing ex-leader continued to protest his innocence in a statement posted to social media.
“It’s not a former president of the Republic who is being locked up this morning, it’s an innocent man,” the first former president in the history of France and the European Union to be imprisoned wrote.
“I am not to be pitied because my wife and my children are by my side… but this morning I feel deep sorrow for a France, which finds itself humiliated by the expression of a vengeance that has taken hatred to an unprecedented level. I have no doubt,” he added.“
Truth will prevail. But how crushing the price will have been.”
Sarkozy’s imprisonment “strengthens his determination and his rage to prove that he is innocent,” his lawyer Christophe Ingrain told BFMTV.”
At 10 o’clock, he will be in the remand center,” he said, but will request his release “very quickly,” as “one night in prison is one night too many.”
“There is objectively no reason for the appeal court to refuse this release, but there is the legal uncertainty and we will face it,” the lawyer said. “There will be no preferential treatment; his request will be examined within the average timeframe, which is one month. In any event, Nicolas Sarkozy will spend three weeks to a month in detention before the appeal court rules.”
If approved, his release would allow him to spend Christmas at home and attend the appeals trial scheduled for March next year.
Sarkozy will be imprisoned in a 9m² cell with a sealed window in solitary confinement for his safety, with a small television, but no mobile phone, local media reported.
During his time in La Santé, the former head of state will take the opportunity to “write about his experience, about the injustice of which he is a victim,” Ingrain said.
Sarkozy was received last Friday by President Emmanuel Macron, who described meeting with him as “normal, from a human point of view.”
The former head of state was sentenced on Sept. 25 to five years in prison after prosecutors argued that his aides, acting in his name, struck a deal with the Gaddafi regime in 2005 to illegally fund his 2007 presidential election campaign.
The court acquitted him on charges of embezzling Libyan public funds, passive corruption and illicit financing of an electoral campaign. EFE
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