The legal representative of former French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced on Tuesday that he has filed a request for his release. Sarkozy only shortly before began serving his sentence in the Paris prison La Santé, where he is to serve five years of imprisonment for criminal conspiracy in the case of financing his election campaign from 2007. TASR informs about this according to the report of the AFP agency.
The 70-year-old French right-wing leader, who was president from 2007 to 2012, was found guilty at the end of September. After his conviction, he became the first ever former head of an EU member state to serve a prison sentence behind bars. However, even shortly before arriving in prison, according to the published opinion, he insisted on his claim that he was innocent.
Due to his age, he could apply for parole immediately after serving his sentence. In France, such a provision applies to prisoners aged 70 and over, allowing them to serve their sentences outside prison under certain conditions.
According to AFP, the Paris Court of Appeal now theoretically has two months to decide whether to release him. while the appeal is pending. In it, Sarkozy challenges both the sentence and the prison sentence pending appeal. “He will be in jail for at least three weeks to a month,” said his lawyer Christophe Ingrain.
According to the court verdict, Sarkozy committed a conspiracy when he allowed his close associates to establish contact with persons in Libya in order to raise money for the election campaign. The court sent him to prison for five years, three of which were suspended, and acquitted him of the other charges. – i.e. accused of passive corruption, illegal campaign financing and enrichment through misappropriation of public funds.
The ex-president will probably be placed in a cell with an area of nine square meters, where he will be alone, prison staff told AFP earlier. According to them, such a measure is intended to prevent contact with other prisoners and at the same time to prevent someone from taking a photo of him with one of the many mobile phones that are regularly smuggled into the prison.
