Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy has started serving a five-year jail sentence after being found guilty of conspiring to fund his 2007 election campaign with money from late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.
This makes Sarkozy, 70, the first former president in modern French history to go to prison, a development that has drawn both public sympathy and criticism across the country.
Sarkozy was driven into La Santé prison in southern Paris around 9:40 a.m. on Monday. The former leader will be held in an isolated section of the prison for security reasons. His cell is about nine square metres and includes a bed, shower, toilet, desk, and small television. He will also be allowed one hour of daily exercise alone.
Hundreds of supporters had gathered outside his home in Paris earlier, cheering as he walked out hand in hand with his wife, former model Carla Bruni-Sarkozy. His son, Louis, had called on supporters to show solidarity, while another son, Pierre, asked for “messages of love and nothing else.”
In a message posted on X before entering the prison, Sarkozy said, “I have no doubt. Truth will prevail. But how crushing the price will have been.”
He added, “It is not a former president they are locking up this morning—it is an innocent man. Do not feel sorry for me because my wife and my children are by my side. But this morning, I feel deep sorrow for a France humiliated by a will for revenge.”
Despite his conviction, Sarkozy continues to insist he is innocent and has appealed the ruling.
He told French newspaper *La Tribune* before his incarceration, “I’m not afraid of prison. I’ll keep my head held high, including at the prison gates.”
President Emmanuel Macron confirmed that he met with Sarkozy at the Élysée Palace last week, saying it was “normal, on a human level, to receive one of my predecessors in that context.”
Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin also said he plans to visit Sarkozy in prison, noting, “I cannot be insensitive to a man’s distress.”
Sarkozy was accused of working with two close allies, Brice Hortefeux and Claude Guéant, to secretly collect campaign funds from Libya during Gaddafi’s rule. Though he was cleared of personally receiving the funds, the court said the case showed “exceptional seriousness.”
Investigations revealed that Sarkozy’s associates had met with Gaddafi’s intelligence chief in 2005 through a Lebanese intermediary, Ziad Takieddine, who later died in Lebanon shortly before Sarkozy’s conviction.
The former leader, who ruled France from 2007 to 2012, is said to have taken two books to prison: The Life of Jesus by Jean-Christian Petitfils and The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas, a story about a man wrongly imprisoned who later seeks justice.
