The former French president Nicolas Sarkozy has been released from prison after a judge ruled he could serve the rest of his sentence outside jail under strict judicial supervision,
The Guardian reports.
Sarkozy, 70, was driven by car from La Santé prison in Paris accompanied by his wife, the singer Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, and arrived at his home in the west of the city without making a public comment. Earlier, he had told a Paris appeals court by video link that his three weeks in jail had been “gruelling” and a “nightmare”.
Sarkozy went to prison on 21 October, after a Paris court gave him a five-year sentence for criminal conspiracy over a scheme to obtain election campaign funds for his 2007 presidential race from the regime of the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.
He denies wrongdoing and has appealed against that verdict, with a fresh trial on appeal scheduled for next spring. Judges ruled last month that, because of the “exceptional gravity” of his conviction, he must go to prison while the appeals process took its course.
A Paris appeal court on Monday granted Sarkozy’s request for release to serve his sentence outside prison. Under the terms of his release, Sarkozy will be forbidden from talking to any officials from the justice ministry, including the justice minister, Gérald Darmanin.
Darmanin, who once considered Sarkozy as his mentor before rejoining Emmanuel Macron’s centrist party in 2017, visited the former president in prison last month. Some French magistrates criticised the move as undermining the independence of judges.
Sarkozy will also be forbidden from talking to others involved in the case, and he will be banned from leaving France.
At the hearing on Monday morning, Sarkozy, dressed in a navy blue suit, appeared on camera from prison, seated at a table with his lawyers beside him. He told the court: “I want to pay tribute to all the prison staff, who are exceptionally humane, and who have made this nightmare bearable – because it is a nightmare.”
