The former French president Nicolas Sarkozy began his five-year jail term at a Paris prison on Tuesday, the first time in more than half a century an ex-head of state has been jailed in the country.
As he left his home this morning, Mr. Sarkozy greeted friends and supporters who shouted his name and sang the French national anthem. He then made his way to the prison by car, escorted by a police convoy.
“It is a fateful day for him, for France, for our institutions, because this incarceration is a shame,” one of his lawyers, Jean-Michel Darrois, told reporters in front of the prison.
Mr. Sarkozy was found guilty of conspiring to seek funding for his 2007 presidential campaign from the government of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the former Libyan strongman, and was handed a five-year sentence last month.
Few observers expect him to serve the whole term, but the verdict and Mr. Sarkozy’s public denunciation of it has fueled a fierce debate in the country. Judges involved in the case have been targeted on social media, with some receiving death threats, according to the president of Paris’s Court of Appeal, Jacques Boulard.
Mr. Sarkozy, a former lawyer who quickly rose through the ranks of French politics, is known for his pugnacious energy and sharp wit. Since he stepped down from office in 2012, he has retained influence both within his own conservative party, the Republicans, and with President Emmanuel Macron, whom he publicly supported during elections in 2022.
Mr. Macron has not commented on the verdict but said on social media after Mr. Sarkozy was convicted that attacks against judges were “unacceptable.”
Mr. Sarkozy, who has also been stripped of the Legion of Honor, France’s highest distinction, has said he is innocent and has appealed the verdict.
He will be confined to a cell at La Santé, a prison in southern Paris. To ensure his safety, he will be placed in solitary confinement, Sébastien Cauwel, the head of the prison administration, said in a radio interview on Tuesday.
“I will continue to denounce this legal scandal, this ordeal that I have been enduring for more than ten years,” Mr. Sarkozy said on social media on Tuesday.
At a gathering with friends and colleagues this month, Mr. Sarkozy, who is partly of Jewish descent, compared himself to Alfred Dreyfus, the Jewish army captain arrested in 1894 on false espionage charges, according to French news media. “The end of the story is not written yet,” he was quoted as saying.
Mr. Sarkozy has been entangled in several high-profile trials since he stepped down from office and has been found guilty of corruption, influence peddling and campaign spending violations.
But this case is by far the most serious, and the most complicated.
Mr. Sarkozy was given some time to put his affairs in order before his incarceration, but judges added a provision to the verdict that meant he would not remain free during his appeal.
His supporters denounced the decision as an unnecessary degradation for a former head of state who did not present a flight risk. But a 2023 report from the Justice Ministry showed that in 89 percent of cases where a person was sentenced to more than two years in prison, as Mr. Sarkozy was, the defendants were incarcerated immediately.
François-Xavier Bellamy, a member of the European Parliament for the Republicans, called it a “political verdict.” Geoffroy Didier, the vice president of the party, said it was an attempt to “humiliate” the former president.
Mr. Macron met with Mr. Sarkozy last Friday, the president’s office said. Mr. Macron has said it was “normal on a human level” to meet with a predecessor in such circumstances, but reiterated that he was not weighing in on the verdict.
Mr. Sarkozy’s outcry over his conviction has revived a wider debate about judicial independence, after Marine Le Pen, the far-right leader, was convicted in April of embezzlement and was barred from running for public office for five years. At the time, her supporters accused judges of tampering with electoral processes.
In an editorial published last month, the newspaper Le Monde warned that Mr. Sarkozy’s reaction was fueling “a disastrous Trumpization of the debate in France,” at a time of growing political pressure on the judiciary worldwide.
Support from some conservative politicians for Mr. Sarkozy grew in the days before his incarceration. The justice minister, Gérald Darmanin, said in a radio interview on Monday that he felt “a lot of sadness” for Mr. Sarkozy and that he would visit him in prison. Rachida Dati, the culture minister, said the ex-president was “like family.” Both have previously worked with Mr. Sarkozy, and Ms. Dati served as justice minister when he was president.
Mr. Sarkozy’s appeal against the verdict is set to be heard before the end of March.
According to another lawyer acting for Mr. Sarkozy, Christophe Ingrain, a request has been filed for early release before his appeal is heard. The Paris Court of Appeal has up to two months to evaluate the request, but typically does so within a month.
Ségolène Le Stradic is a reporter and researcher covering France.
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