On Monday morning, the Public Prosecutor’s Office requested the release under judicial supervision of former French President Nicolas Sarkozy. The decision is scheduled to be announced, after a session in which the former president participated via video from prison, at 1:30 p.m. Sarkozy said during his speech before the court, “It is difficult, very difficult. It is certainly so for any detainee. I would even say that it is exhausting,” before thanking the “humanity” of the officials who dealt with him these days and made “this nightmare (…) bearable.”
This makes it possible for Sarkozy to be released from prison after three weeks of imprisonment. The former conservative president was sentenced to five years in prison on September 25 for illicit association in the case of illegal financing of his 2007 presidential campaign by the Libyan regime of Muammar Gaddafi. The judge must now decide whether the former president can continue serving his sentence on temporary release until his appeal is decided.
On October 21, the former president became the first former head of state of France to cross the gates of a prison center to serve a sentence behind bars. He was admitted to La Santé prison in Paris, where there are 754 detainees. The prison, like many prisons in France, is beyond its capacity.
But Sarkozy does not meet the other prisoners. The former head of state remained in a secluded area so as not to have contact with other prisoners. Sarkozy, who upon entering received threats and shouts from other prisoners, is not detained like the others. Interior Minister Laurent Nunez confirmed that the former President of the Republic benefited from a security apparatus that was completely unprecedented in the history of prisons.
Sarkozy is placed in solitary confinement in a section containing about twenty cells, and is constantly accompanied by two armed security men, “given his condition and the threats to which he is exposed,” according to the minister’s words. This innovation caused some incomprehension even within the prison administration itself, as well as a violent reaction from the UFAP-UNSA-Justice union. This center, one of the two main unions of prison officials, condemned in a statement “the senseless apparatus, the security madness and, above all, the unprecedented humiliation of the entire prison service.”
After his sentencing on September 25, Sarkozy denounced the blow to the rule of law. The former president asserts that he is innocent and has the support of the political class.
The weekend before he went to prison, Sarkozy visited President Emmanuel Macron at the Elysee Palace. He also received a controversial visit in prison from Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin, who justified his action as a measure to control the security of a former president. The Minister of Justice replied: “Ensuring the safety of a former president of the republic in prison, an unprecedented event, does not in any way threaten the independence of judges, but rather is part of the duty of vigilance on the head of the administration, to whom I am accountable to Parliament in accordance with Article 20 of the Constitution.”
The Paris Court considered it proven that between 2005 and 2007, when Sarkozy was Minister of the Interior, he maneuvered to obtain financial support from the Libyan regime through his closest collaborators. He was acquitted of the crimes of passive corruption and money diversion, because although it was “confirmed that there were Libyan funds that reached France,” it could not be proven that they were intended for his presidential campaign.
In this case, which took years of investigation, 11 other people were implicated, including two of his former ministers. This is the fifth trial that the former French president has faced during the past five years.
Last December, Sarkozy was sentenced to three years in prison on charges of corruption and influence peddling in the so-called wiretapping case. He was accused of trying to buy a prosecutor into informing him of another investigation in which he was involved and which was subject to confidentiality in exchange for favors. Since it was three years, he only had to serve one under house arrest, with an electronic bracelet.
About The Author
