Nicolas Sarkozy Begins Prison Sentence

Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy has begun a five-year sentence in a Paris jail for seeking Libyan funding for his 2007 presidential campaign.

“Welcome Sarkozy!”, “Sarkozy’s here,” reporters heard convicts shouting from their cells.

Sarkozy left his home in Paris this morning hand-in-hand with his wife Carla Bruni to begin his sentence for conspiring to raise campaign funds from Libya.

Sarkozy, who served as the conservative president of France between 2007 and 2012, is the first former French leader to be jailed as Marshal Philippe Pétain, a Nazi collaborator, after World War II.

“I’m not afraid of prison.I’ll keep my head held high, including at the prison gates,” Sarkozy told La tribune Dimanche newspaper before his incarceration.

Sébastien Cauwel, head of the contry’s prison system including La Santé jail, stated the former president will be held in isolation.

“He will be able to access the exercise yard, on his own, twice a day, he will have access to an activities room while on his own and he will be alone when inside his prison cell,” Mr Cauwel told RTL Radio.

Watch: Sarkozy Waves to Supporters Before Leaving for Prison

In a post on X (formerly Twitter) before entering prison, Mr Sarkozy said he was…