France's former president Sarkozy will begin serving a 5-year prison sentence Tuesday
Source: AP
By JEFFREY SCHAEFFER and NICOLAS GARRIGA
Updated 7:45 PM CDT, October 20, 2025
Leer en español
Nicolas Sarkozy will become the first former French president in living memory to be imprisoned when he is expected to begin a five-year sentence Tuesday in Paris’ La Santé prison.
Convicted of criminal conspiracy in a scheme to finance his 2007 election campaign with funds from Libya, Sarkozy maintains his innocence. Regardless, he will be admitted to serve his time in a prison that has held some of the most high-profile inmates since the 19th century. They include Capt. Alfred Dreyfus, wrongly convicted of treason because he was Jewish, and the Venezuelan militant known as Carlos the Jackal, who carried out several attacks on French soil.
Sarkozy told Le Figaro newspaper that he expects to be held in solitary confinement, where he would be kept away from all other prisoners for security reasons. Another possibility is that he is held in the prison’s section for “vulnerable″ inmates, colloquially known as the VIP section.
Former La Santé inmates described their experiences and what the former president might expect to face. The prison, which was inaugurated in 1867, has been fully renovated in recent years.
Read more: https://apnews.com/article/nicolas-sarkozy-prison-france-sante-president-paris-a4016cf6b409fd12c7986118709ddfba
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