Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy arrived at the La Sante prison in Paris to start his five-year sentence on Tuesday, October 21, 2025.
Sarkozy, 70, was sentenced to prison in September for conspiring to raise campaign funds from late Libyan dictator Muammer Gaddafi.
Sarkozy’s 2007 campaign was said to have taken millions in cash from Gaddafi, who was later overthrown and killed during the Arab Spring uprisings.
While the former president was found guilty of conspiring with close aides to orchestrate the scheme, he was acquitted of personally receiving or using the funds.
A Paris judge ruled that Sarkozy, France’s right-wing leader from 2007 to 2012, would start to serve time without waiting for his appeal to be heard, due to “the seriousness of the disruption to public order caused by the offense”.
He has consistently denied wrongdoing and has called the case politically motivated.
Ex-French president Sarkozy jailed for accepting campaign funds from Gaddafi
The former conservative president left his home for the car journey to the prison, walking hand in hand with his wife Carla Bruni and cheered by a crowd of supporters chanting “Nicolas, Nicolas” and singing La Marseillaise national anthem.
He is jailed at the La Sante prison in Paris, where he will be kept away from all other prisoners for security reasons.
Sarkozy is the first former French leader to be jailed since Nazi collaborator Marshal Philippe Petain after World War Two.
Shortly after he headed for La Sante, Sarkozy published a long message on X in which he claimed to be a victim of revenge and hatred.
“I want to tell (French people), with the unshakable strength that is mine, that it is not a former president of the Republic who is being imprisoned this morning — it is an innocent man,” he stated.
His lawyers, however, told Reuters that they had filed a request for early release, pending his appeals trial, and that they expected this request to be reviewed in about a month.
They said they hoped they could get Sarkozy freed on early release by Christmas.
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