HIBAPRESS – Abdellatif Baraka
Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy began, on Tuesday, October 21st, implementing a five-year prison sentence in La Santé prison in the capital, Paris, after being convicted of conspiring to raise illegal funds from the former Libyan regime to finance his 2007 election campaign, becoming the first French president to be imprisoned since World War II.
The ruling, which sparked widespread controversy in political circles, was described as a legal precedent, as the court decided to implement it immediately despite the existence of an appeal, justifying this by the seriousness of the act on public order. Sarkozy, who served as president between 2007 and 2012, denied the charges against him and considered them politically motivated, stressing that his opponents were seeking to humiliate him judicially. Despite being acquitted of receiving money directly, he was convicted of orchestrating a scheme with close aides, at the end of a judicial battle that lasted for years. He had also previously been convicted in a separate corruption case related to his attempt to obtain secret information from a judge, and he is serving his sentence with an electronic bracelet. It is expected that he will be held in an isolation unit inside the prison, in conditions similar to the rest of the prisoners, with the possibility of using a television and a landline phone, and he has stated that he will take with him the novel "The Count of Monte Cristo" among three books that he chose for his first week behind bars. Polls indicate that the majority of French people support the ruling and its immediate implementation, in light of the rising calls to end impunity for senior officials.
