Sarkozy to be put in solitary confinement – media

Convicted of campaign-funding irregularities, the ex-president has become the first French leader in modern history to serve prison time

Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, convicted of criminal conspiracy in a scheme to get funds for his 2007 election campaign, will serve his prison term in solitary confinement, AFP has reported.

On September 25, a Paris court sentenced Sarkozy, 70, to five years behind bars over a 2005 plot to obtain secret campaign funds from the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. According to the court, he offered to help restore Libya’s standing in international affairs in return for the payments. The presiding judge cited the “exceptional gravity” of the offense in ordering that the ex-president be jailed even if he appeals.

President of France from 2007 to 2012, Sarkozy has become the first former leader of an EU member state to be jailed. His sentence is likely to begin on Tuesday.

On Sunday, AFP quoted unnamed prison staff at Paris’s La Sante jail as saying that he will likely be held in a nine-square-meter (95-square-foot) cell in the prison’s solitary-confinement wing. The arrangement was reportedly chosen to minimize his contact with other inmates.

Sarkozy denounced the verdict as an “injustice” and insisted on his innocence. His lawyers have filed an appeal and are expected to request that the sentence be converted to house arrest once he is incarcerated.

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The investigation of claims made by Gaddafi’s son Saif al-Islam, in March 2011, that his father had transferred around €50 million ($54.3 million) to Sarkozy’s campaign, officially began in 2013.

Sarkozy played a leading role in NATO’s intervention, which led to Gaddafi’s overthrow and subsequent murder by anti-government armed groups in October 2011.

Since then, the ex-president has been convicted in two separate cases involving corruption, influence-peddling, and illegal campaign financing charges, both of which resulted in house arrest.