Sarkozy goes to jail

Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy about now has spent a week in jail, part of a five-year sentence for criminal conspiracy to obtain election campaign funds from Libya. The rightwing leader of France from 2007 to 2012 made history as the first former head of a European Union country and French post-World War leader to serve time in prison. His journey from presidency to jail is a thriller. 

Sarkozy, 70, arrived at La Santé prison in Paris on Tuesday, 21st October, to begin serving his sentence in solitary confinement. He had walked out of his home in a plush area of the French capital earlier in the day, hand-in-hand with his supermodel-turned-singer wife Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, and headed for a police car that fetched him to prison. As he was being driven to the notorious 19th-Century prison, he again protested his innocence. Posting on X, he wrote: “I have no doubt. Truth will prevail. But how crushing the price will have been. With unwavering strength I tell you (French people), it is not a former president they are locking up this morning, it’s an innocent man.” He added: “Do not feel sorry for me because my wife and my children are by my side... But this morning I feel deep sorrow for France humiliated by a will for revenge.”

It was one last opportunity for the former president to be heard by the public before entering into prison. Reports said he is being held in solitary confinement for his own safety in a cell that measures about a nine-square-metre. The cell in the prison’s isolation wing, where he will have no contact with other prisoners, has a toilet, a shower, a desk, a small electric hob and a small television for which he reportedly has to pay a monthly fee of 14 €uros, plus the right to a small fridge. He has no mobile phone, only a security-controlled phoneline that allows him contact with his lawyers and family members. He has the right to receive information from the outside world and is entitled to two family visits per week. Sarkozy will be able to leave his cell for one hour a day, to walk in an interior courtyard with the opening to the sky protected by wire mesh. Three prison guards must accompany him when he leaves his cell.

A court in Paris had, last month, convicted the former president of criminal conspiracy to obtain funds from the regime of late longtime Libyan ruler Muammar Gadhafi to fund his 2007 presidential campaign. The court said Sarkozy, as a presidential candidate and then interior minister, used his position from 2005 to 2007 to foster corruption “at the highest level” by sourcing millions of €uros from Gadhafi. Sarkozy denied doing anything wrong and was cleared of personally receiving the money, but he was convicted of criminal association with two close aides who were indicted for obtaining secret campaign funds from the Libyan strongman. The two men, in 2005, held talks with Gadhafi’s agents at a meeting arranged by a Franco-Lebanese intermediary named Ziad Tiakeddine. (Tiakeddine died in Lebanon shortly before Sarkozy's conviction.)

The ex-president appealed the conviction, and under French law he is yet deemed innocent. But the court ruled that he must start serving prison time before his appeal gets heard in view of the “exceptional seriousness of the facts.” He contests both the conviction and the judge’s unusual decision to incarcerate him pending appeal. “I will continue to denounce this judicial scandal,” he wrote on X as he headed to jail. His lawyers said on Tuesday they had filed an immediate appeal for his release, but judges have up to two months to process the request. Those familiar with the French justice system say the  court could order Sarkozy’s release under judicial supervision, or he could be placed under home arrest with an ankle tag. But the court could also decide against letting him out of prison if, for instance, it deems his being in jail the only way to prevent evidence tampering or witness intimidation.

“With the Sarkozy verdict, France beamed a searchlight on a longstanding practice of French leaders cash-cowing Africa for political funding” 

Ahead of going to La Santé prison, Sarkozy gave a series of media interviews in which he waxed defiant. “I’m not afraid of prison. I’ll keep my head held high, including at the prison gates,” he told an outlet. He said he had asked for “no privileges” in his treatment behind bars. The former president told another outlet he had packed family photos and three books, as permitted by prison rules for the first week. “I’m bringing The Count of Monte Cristo and two volumes of the biography of Jesus by Jean-Christian Petitfils,” he explained, adding that he’d been advised to also take earplugs. “At night you hear lots of noise, shouting, screaming.” He further stated: “My life is a novel and this ordeal is now part of it. They wanted to make me disappear, but this will make me be reborn.”

Sarkozy apparently had the sympathy of French governing authorities, only they couldn’t help him against judicial authority. Few days before heading to prison, he was received at the Élysée Palace by incumbent President Emmanuel Macron, a centrist, who told reporters “it was normal that on a human level, I should receive one of my predecessors in that context.” Quizzed about the verdict against Sarkozy, Macron said it was not his role to comment on, or criticise judicial decisions. “Nevertheless, it’s normal that the image of a president being imprisoned...may provoke comments,” he also said, adding: “We must distinguish emotion, including the legitimate emotion of relatives and part of the country... and the proper functioning of justice.” Following the verdict last month, the presiding judge in the criminal conspiracy trial received death threats from unknown people, which Macron publicly called out as “unacceptable.”

In further indication of official support for the ex-president, Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin said he would go to visit him in prison as part of his role in ensuring Sarkozy’s safety and proper functioning of the jail. “I cannot be insensitive to a man’s distress,” he added. Reports later last week also cited the interior ministry saying two policemen will be posted at the prison to guard Sarkozy. But a top magistrate warned against the risk of “hindering justice” and undermining the independence of the judiciary. “The goal for everyone must be serenity, to allow justice to truly rule independently...free from any pressure,” the magistrate said.

With the Sarkozy verdict, France beamed a searchlight on a longstanding practice of French leaders cash-cowing Africa for political funding. This practice largely encouraged the culture of corruption of leaders that has bedevilled the continent. But Sarkozy is only a scapegoat, he is by no means the only one who engaged the tack. Other French leaders did. Sarkozy’s hard luck could be because he defaulted on the basic understanding in his deal with Gadhafi, for which allied parties came after him in quest for revenge.

According to reports, Gadhafi struck the financing deal with Sarkozy’s men in the hope of buying support to clean up his international image and improve diplomatic relations with the West. The largesse might have remained secret if the ex-president honoured the pact to support Gadhafi diplomatically, but he defaulted during the Libyan crisis of 2011 that led to the strongman’s overthrow and killing. Sarkozy’s government voted in the United Nations Security Council for global intervention in Libya’s civil war and sent troops to fight against Gadhafi’s army in support of the country’s transitional government. Following Gadhafi’s death, his son, Saif al-Islam, felt betrayed and spilled the beans about Libya’s funding of Sarkozy’s 2007 election victory; he, indeed, demanded a refund. His disclosure triggered a spate of interrogations and confessions, among them Tiakeddine’s confession that he conveyed money from the Gadhafi regime to Sarkozy’s camp. The allegations persuaded the French justice department to open an investigation, upon which the ex-president was found guilty of corruption and sentenced to imprisonment. 

Literature abounds on how French leaders induced African rulers to funnel money from the continent for financing their political projects. The Sarkozy saga lends fresh credence to the narrative and should provoke societal soul searching in France that would at least dissuade such practice henceforth, if old cases would not be revisited. Meanwhile, the world has a lot to learn from the French about equity before the law and fierce independence of the judiciary. Nigeria could do with that lesson.