A Paris court will decide on Monday whether to release former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, just 20 days after he was imprisoned.
He was sentenced to five years in prison after being convicted of a criminal conspiracy to finance his 2007 election victory. campaign at the expense of Libya.
Sarkozy, 70, is the first former president of modern France to be sentenced to prison. He was previously convicted on corruption charges but was ordered to wear an electric monitor rather than serve a prison sentence.
Sarkozy’s legal team appealed against his conviction and also applied for early release. The appeals court is due to take place at a later date, possibly in the spring.
A Paris court will hear his request for release on Monday, with a decision expected later in the day.
The former president, who served from 2007 to 2012, maintains his innocence and is contesting the conviction and the decision to jail him pending an appeal.
Why Sarkozy can be released from prison
Paris court on September 25. Sarkozy pleaded guilty and said the prison sentence would take effect immediately. But as soon as he was jailed on October 21, his legal team filed for early release.
The court is due to rule on Monday under Article 144 of France’s criminal code, which says release should be the general rule pending appeal, while detention remains an exception, for example for those considered dangerous or at risk of fleeing to another country, or to protect evidence or prevent pressure on witnesses.
It does not include the reasons for the judgment.
At Monday’s hearing, Sarkozy is expected to give assurances that he will comply with justice’s requirements for parole.
If granted, he will be placed under judicial supervision and could be released from La Santé prison in Paris within hours.
What Sarkozy was convicted of
September 25 In the ruling, the Paris court said that Sarkozy, as a presidential candidate and interior minister, used his position between 2005 and 2007 to “facilitate corruption at the highest level” in order to finance his presidential election campaign with funds from Libya, which was then led by longtime ruler Moammar Gadhafi.
The three-judge panel said Sarkozy’s closest associates Claude Guéant and Brice Hortefeux held secret meetings in 2005 with Abdullah al-Senoussi, Gadhafi’s brother-in-law and intelligence chief, despite him being “convicted of acts of terrorism, mainly against French and European citizens”.
Al-Senoussi is held in 1988. the mastermind of the attacks on a Pan Am jumbo over Lockerbie, Scotland, and a French airliner over Niger the following year, which claimed hundreds of lives. In 1999, a Paris court convicted him in absentia and sentenced him to life in prison for the attack on France’s UTA Flight 772.
The court said a sophisticated financial scheme had been put in place, although it said there was no evidence that the money transferred from Libya to France was ultimately used for Sarkozy herself in 2007. for the campaign.
Why does he say it’s a plot
Sarkozy has consistently maintained that he is innocent and the victim of a “conspiracy” by some linked to the Libyan government, including what he described as the “Gaddafi clan”.
He said the campaign finance charges were in retaliation for his call as French president to oust Gadhafi.
Sarkozy was one of the first Western leaders to commit to military intervention in Libya in 2011, when pro-democracy protests in the Arab Spring swept the Arab world. That same year, Gadhafi was toppled and killed in an uprising that ended four decades of rule in the North African country.
In addition, Sarkozy notes that the court acquitted him of three other charges – passive corruption, illegal campaign financing and concealment of embezzlement of public funds.
He also points to the court’s failure to establish a direct link between the Libyan money and his campaign financing as further evidence of his innocence.
Other lawsuits are coming up
Monday’s hearing is not the only legal case against Sarkozy.
French Supreme Court, Court of Cassation, November 26 will announce a decision on a separate indictment for the illegal Sarkozy failed 2012 election. re-election campaign financing.
Last year, the Paris Court of Appeal sentenced Sarkozy to one year in prison, of which six months were suspended. He is accused of spending almost twice the maximum allowed amount – 22.5 million. euros – for re-election, which he lost to Socialist Francois Hollande.
Sarkozy denied the allegations.
The former president is also at the center of another judicial investigation related to the Libyan funding case.
French judges in 2023 filed preliminary charges against him for his alleged role in trying to pressure a witness to testify. Sarkozy’s wife, supermodel-turned-singer Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, was also indicted last year for her alleged involvement.
Witness Ziad Takieddine was central to allegations that Sarkozy received illegal payments from the Libyan government. He later retracted his statement.
Sarkozy was found guilty by a Paris court in 2021 and an appeals court in 2023 of corruption and influence peddling for attempting to bribe a magistrate in exchange for information about a legal case involving him. Later, the court of cassation left the sentence unchanged.
Sarkozy was sentenced to wear an electronic monitoring bracelet for one year. He was paroled in May because of his age, allowing him to remove the electronic tag after just over three months.