Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy will begin serving his sentence on October 21 in the 19th-century La Santé prison in Paris. According to Le Monde, he will be placed in the QB4 wing for people requiring special care and will be placed in a cell with a barred window, equipped with a bed, a refrigerator and a TV.
The 70-year-old former French president was found guilty of Libya financing his 2007 presidential campaign with money from the government of then-Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, and will begin serving his sentence on October 21.
La Santé prison is known as a place where celebrities and politicians are imprisoned. His famous prisoners included: gangster Jacques Mesrine and Maurice Papon, former Paris police chief, convicted in 1998 of crimes against humanity committed during World War II. Alfred Dreyfus, a French officer of Jewish origin who was wrongly convicted of espionage at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, was also briefly held here.
La Santé prison, located in the 14th arrondissement of Paris, was built in 1867. Until 1972, death sentences were carried out there by guillotine.
According to information from the daily “Le Monde”, the former president will be sent to the QB4 wing, intended for people requiring special care. It consists of 19 cells and has a separate walking area. Sarkozy would also have access to a gym and library there.
The former French president will be placed in a single cell measuring 9 square meters with a barred window, equipped with a stove, refrigerator and shower, as well as a landline telephone with approved numbers.
According to French media, he may be entitled to two 45-minute visits a week and two walks a day. He will be accompanied by a guard wherever he goes within the prison.
His status as a public figure will allow him to avoid full strip searches, but former La Santé prisoners interviewed by French media say the conditions there are still harsh and there are no special facilities.
“The cells of the inmates at La Santé are no different. There will be no preferential conditions for Sarkozy,” said Hugo Vitry, a guard at La Santé prison, as quoted by the French news television BFMTV.
In his opinion, the only difference may be that some public figures are separated from other prisoners. This was the case of Sarkozy's former minister, Claude Gueant, who was imprisoned in the same wing of the prison where Sarkozy would be imprisoned.
According to Patrick Balkany, an interlocutor of Radio Sud, the former mayor of Levallois-Perret, who was imprisoned in La Santé in 2019, the former president should cook himself, because the prison kitchen is terrible.
Sarkozy will be able to use a cooking stove in his cell, which – as the media emphasizes – is “comfortable” compared to the conditions in which most French prisoners are kept in overcrowded prisons.
Sarkozy himself stated that he “will not demand any facilitations.” “When you have to bear the cross, you have to carry it to the end. And this is not the end of the story,” he said.
According to the Times, the former president's lawyers are to file an appeal immediately after his imprisonment, citing the client's age and “legal shortcomings”, which is why Sarkozy may stay in La Santé for much less than 5 years. The appeals court judge will have two months to consider the application for release from prison and possible consent to serving the sentence under electronic monitoring.
According to French media, the last imprisoned leader of the French state was Philippe Petain, head of the Vichy government collaborating with the Germans, who died in 1951.
Sarkozy will not be the first European politician of his stature to go to prison.
The former socialist Prime Minister of Portugal from 2005 to 2011, José Socrates, was preventively arrested in 2014 on charges of tax crimes and money laundering and spent almost a year in prison in Évora, followed by 42 days under house arrest.
The Portuguese press wrote at the time that Socrates' arrest had a cathartic effect, because in front of the eyes of millions of citizens struggling with poverty and unemployment at the time, “a much-needed drama unfolds, and the once powerful politician is treated like any ordinary citizen.”
Anna Gwozdowska (PAP)
ag/bst/mhr/
