{"id":323360,"date":"2025-10-22T08:28:14","date_gmt":"2025-10-22T08:28:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/323360\/"},"modified":"2025-10-22T08:28:14","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T08:28:14","slug":"things-to-know-about-nicolas-sarkozy-frances-imprisoned-former-president","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/323360\/","title":{"rendered":"Things to know about Nicolas Sarkozy, France’s imprisoned former president"},"content":{"rendered":"

PARIS (AP) \u2014 Once the most powerful person in France, Nicolas Sarkozy<\/a> is now behind bars.<\/p>\n

Being locked up in Paris\u2019 La Sant\u00e9<\/a> prison for criminal conspiracy<\/a> is the latest twist in the uncommon life of the 70-year-old former president.<\/p>\n

Proudly tough on crime when he was in government, Sarkozy now has to adjust to the strict constraints of hours and days governed by penitentiary rules. He is appealing his conviction and maintains his innocence.<\/p>\n

In sentencing Sarkozy to five years in prison<\/a> for plotting to finance his 2007 campaign with funds from Libya, judges took a swing at privilege and impunity in France and signaled that all people are equal before the law. <\/p>\n

But the newest of more than 80,000 inmates in French prisons is the only one who used to command the country\u2019s nuclear arsenal. <\/p>\n

Sarkozy still has friends in high places. President Emmanuel Macron<\/a> welcomed him back to the presidential Elys\u00e9e Palace last week for a farewell meeting before Sarkozy became, on Tuesday, modern France\u2019s first ex-leader to be incarcerated. A police motorcade escorted his car to prison. <\/p>\n

Here are other things to know about France\u2019s president from 2007 to 2012: <\/p>\n

One-term president<\/p>\n

Sarkozy\u2019s election marked a generational change for France: Born in Paris in 1955, he was France\u2019s first president with no memory of World War II.<\/p>\n

A conservative, Sarkozy beat Socialist candidate S\u00e9gol\u00e8ne Royal in the election\u2019s second-round run-off, thwarting her bid to become France\u2019s first woman president.<\/p>\n

After a five-year term buffeted by the 2008 crisis in the U.S. financial system<\/a> that rocked the global economy, Sarkozy\u2019s reelection effort in 2012 ended in defeat to another Socialist leader \u2014 Fran\u00e7ois Hollande, Royal\u2019s ex-partner<\/a> and father of their four children.<\/p>\n

\u2018President Bling-Bling\u2019 <\/p>\n

Blunt-speaking and purposefully provocative at times, Sarkozy was, and remains, a polarizing figure.<\/p>\n

His admiration of money and glitz earned him the nickname \u201cPresident Bling-Bling,\u201d not a positive thing in a country with a complicated, even hostile, relationship with wealth that guillotined aristocrats during the French Revolution.<\/p>\n

Sarkozy ostentatiously celebrated his 2007 win with rich friends at the chic Brasserie Fouquet\u2019s on the Champs-\u00c9lys\u00e9es and jetted off to holiday aboard a billionaire industrialist\u2019s yacht.<\/p>\n

One of his government\u2019s first acts was to more than double his salary as president. Sarkozy once suggested that a person who doesn\u2019t have a Rolex watch by age 50 is a failure.<\/p>\n

Carla Bruni-Sarkozy<\/p>\n

Sarkozy was still married to his second wife, C\u00e9cilia, when he entered the Elys\u00e9e Palace. <\/p>\n

But within a year, they divorced \u2014 a first for a French president \u2014 and weeks later, he appeared at Disneyland with supermodel-turned-singer Carla Bruni, now Carla Bruni-Sarkozy.<\/p>\n

Their romance and lifestyle made them tabloid fare. But their relationship has endured his legal troubles. <\/p>\n

They\u2019re both skilled in using the spotlight.<\/p>\n

He embraced her before getting into the car for his ride to prison. She then slowly walked back to their house without him, an image that feeds their narrative of a family laboring against injustice. <\/p>\n

An outsider<\/p>\n

The son of a Hungarian immigrant father and French-Greek mother, Sarkozy described himself as an \u201coutsider\u201d and self-styled \u201cman of the people.\u201d<\/p>\n

A lawyer by training, it was in politics that he quickly shone. He became a mayor at age 28. He made national headlines in 1993 when he helped negotiate the release of children held by a hostage-taker strapped with explosives, who called himself \u201cHuman Bomb.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unafraid to break French taboos, Sarkozy breathed some real-world modernity into the tradition-bound presidency, going jogging and biking in public.<\/p>\n

Dubbed \u201cSarko the American,\u201d he tightened ties with the U.S. and Israel. <\/p>\n

He also championed Western military intervention to oust Libyan leader, Moammar Gadhafi. Their relationship later became the focus of police investigations in France and the trial this year<\/a> over the financing of Sarkozy\u2019s 2007 campaign.<\/p>\n

\u2018Poor jerk!\u2019<\/p>\n

First as a minister and later as president, Sarkozy sometimes shocked and angered with crude and direct language. His energy was sometimes seen as impetuousness. French media dubbed him the \u201chyper-president.\u201d<\/p>\n

He once told a man at an agricultural fair who refused to shake his hand: \u201cGet lost, you poor jerk!\u201d<\/p>\n

On his path to the presidency, as an ambitious interior minister in charge of fighting crime, he infuriated blue-collar towns by describing some of their residents as \u201cscum\u201d and suggesting that high-pressure hoses should be used to clean them up. <\/p>\n

He pushed for tighter controls on immigration, warning of France being potentially overwhelmed by migration, especially from Africa. Under Sarkozy, France banned the wearing of face-covering Islamic veils, known as burqas, in public places. <\/p>\n

In the wake of his presidency, far-right leader Marine Le Pen<\/a> has relentlessly focused on immigration and the place of France\u2019s 5 million Muslims with growing success, edging closer to power.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Associated Press writer Sylvie Corbet contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PARIS (AP) \u2014 Once the most powerful person in France, Nicolas Sarkozy is now behind bars. Being locked…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":321189,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[160809,8703,156,40783,161524,57,6604,362,2851,50,57334,3715,80,2938,103,107],"class_list":{"0":"post-323360","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-carla-bruni","9":"tag-emmanuel-macron","10":"tag-france","11":"tag-france-government","12":"tag-franois-hollande","13":"tag-general-news","14":"tag-international-news","15":"tag-legal-proceedings","16":"tag-marine-le-pen","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-nicolas-sarkozy","19":"tag-paris","20":"tag-politics","21":"tag-prisons","22":"tag-world","23":"tag-world-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115416878562796279","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=323360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323360\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/321189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=323360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=323360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=323360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}