France’s former president Nicolas Sarkozy is set to go to prison on Tuesday over charges of acquiring Libyan funding for his 2007 presidential run, French authorities said on Sunday.
He becomes the first former head of an EU country to serve time behind bars. Sarkozy was charged with hatching a criminal conspiracy over a plan for late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi to fund his electoral campaign.
The former leader will be incarcerated in the Parisian prison La Santé. "If they absolutely want me to sleep in prison, I will sleep in prison -- but with my head held high," he said after his sentence on September 25.
Sarkozy is only the second French leader to be incarcerated since Philippe Petain, the Nazi collaborator, was jailed after World War II. Though the sentence served to him does not indicate the period for which Sarkozy would be in jail. However, the judge, Nathalie Gavarino, said the offences were of "exceptional gravity".
Sarkozy has been under the legal radar in France since losing his re-election bid in 2012. He was handed a prison sentence in two other cases besides the Gaddafi Saga.
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In the so-called "Libyan case" that ended in a prison sentence, prosecutors argued that his aides, acting with his authority and in his name, struck a deal with Gaddafi in 2005 to illegally fund his victorious presidential election bid two years later.
Six out of ten people living in France believe the latest prison sentence to be "fair", according to a survey of more than 1,000 adults conducted by pollster Elabe.
The presiding judge in the conspiracy trial received death threats after her verdict last month, prompting President Emmanuel Macron to publicly call out such attacks as "unacceptable".
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