{"id":454344,"date":"2025-09-27T03:16:16","date_gmt":"2025-09-27T03:16:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/454344\/"},"modified":"2025-09-27T03:16:16","modified_gmt":"2025-09-27T03:16:16","slug":"nicolas-sarkozys-lawyers-will-try-to-ensure-time-in-prison-is-as-short-as-possible-nicolas-sarkozy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/454344\/","title":{"rendered":"Nicolas Sarkozy\u2019s lawyers will try to ensure time in prison is \u2018as short as possible\u2019 | Nicolas Sarkozy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lawyers for the former French president Nicolas Sarkozy<\/a> have said they will try to ensure he serves as little time in prison as possible, after he was sentenced to five years for criminal conspiracy<\/a> over a scheme to get election campaign funds from the regime of the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to make sure that his incarceration will be as short as possible,\u201d Sarkozy\u2019s lawyer, Jean-Michel Darrois, told the BFMTV news channel on Friday after he became the first French president to go to jail<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Sarkozy, who was a Republican president from 2007 to 2012, has lodged an appeal against his conviction, but a special provision by judges means he must begin a jail term in the coming weeks, while any appeal process goes ahead.<\/p>\n

Henri Guaino, a Sarkozy ally who once served as his special adviser, told RTL radio that the former president\u2019s conviction was \u201ca humiliation for the state and its institutions\u201d and urged the French president, Emmanuel Macron, to pardon Sarkozy so he could avoid prison.<\/p>\n

Macron has not commented on the conviction and sentence.<\/p>\n

Senior figures in Sarkozy\u2019s rightwing Les R\u00e9publicains party have sent messages of public support but amid rising distrust of the political class have stopped short of calling for a pardon. The interior minister, Bruno Retailleau, who heads the party, expressed his \u201cfull support and friendship\u201d, adding he had no doubt Sarkozy would devote all his energy to defending himself on appeal.<\/p>\n

\"'I‘I am innocent’: Nicolas Sarkozy given five-year prison sentence after Libya trial \u2013 video<\/p>\n

Sarkozy, 70, has an appointment with the state prosecutor on 13 October when he will be told the date of his incarceration, which could be as early as October or November. French media speculated that he would probably be imprisoned in La Sant\u00e9 prison in the south of Paris in an individual cell but mixing with other prisoners in the courtyard and common areas. A prison officer said typically prisoners at the facility were in their cells 23 hours a day.<\/p>\n

Like any other prisoner, once Sarkozy enters jail, his lawyers will be able to petition for his release or for him to serve his term in a different way, such as with an electronic bracelet. That request would have to be heard by a judge.<\/p>\n

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In an editorial, the conservative French daily Le Figaro denounced the court ruling as \u201cabsurd and incomprehensible\u201d.<\/p>\n

But other commentators said politicians of all parties and backgrounds had been sentenced in criminal courts in France, such as the Socialist minister J\u00e9r\u00f4me Cahuzac<\/a> who had led Fran\u00e7ois Hollande\u2019s drive for a more honest tax system, but was convicted for tax fraud and secretly stashing his wealth in tax havens around the world.<\/p>\n

Le Monde said Sarkozy\u2019s conviction and sentence showed \u201cnobody is above the law\u201d.<\/p>\n

France\u2019s biggest magistrates\u2019 union said that for prison sentences of five years or more, more than 80% of French people who are convicted go straight to jail, so Sarkozy was not being treated any differently.<\/p>\n

The public prosecutor, who had accused Sarkozy in court of entering into a \u201cFaustian pact of corruption with one of the most unspeakable dictators of the last 30 years\u201d to gain election funding from Gaddafi, had recommended at the end of the trial a seven-year prison sentence. Judges on Thursday instead sentenced Sarkozy to five years, but with a special provision that the jail term would start in the coming weeks, despite any appeals process.<\/p>\n

On the left, Eva Joly, a former magistrate and green candidate for the presidency in 2012, said Sarkozy\u2019s criticisms of the justice system outside the courtroom were \u201can attack on democracy\u201d and a discourse of the kind made by the US president, Donald Trump.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lawyers for the former French president Nicolas Sarkozy have said they will try to ensure he serves as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":454345,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[12,26],"class_list":{"0":"post-454344","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115274094044602690","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=454344"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454344\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/454345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=454344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=454344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=454344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}