Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy began his five-year prison sentence on Tuesday, locked in a nine-square-meter cell in Paris’ infamous La Santé prison.
Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy has begun his five-year prison sentence after being found guilty of receiving millions of euros from the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi to finance his 2007 election campaign.
The 70-year-old, who led France from 2007 to 2012, was locked up on Tuesday in a nine-square-meter cell at La Santé prison in Paris. The 19th-century prison has a dark history, having housed some of the country’s most infamous criminals and even witnessed guillotine executions until 1972. More recently, model agent Jean-Luc Brunel, a close associate of Jeffrey Epstein, was housed there awaiting sex trafficking charges before being found dead in his cell in 2022.
La Santé is noticeably overcrowded, housing 1,243 inmates despite being built for only 657, according to August data from the Ministry of Justice. France has one of the worst rates of prison overcrowding in Europe, ranking only behind Slovenia and Cyprus, the Council of Europe says.
Sarkozy is reportedly being held in a single-occupancy cell in the isolation wing for his own safety. Inmates in the unit spend most of their time alone and only go outside for an hour a day, separated from others. Their cells have curtains on the windows to limit communication between inmates, according to a 2020 report from the General Supervisor of Places of Deprivation of Liberty.
Inside, Sarkozy has a toilet, a shower, a desk, a small hot plate and a television (for which he will pay a monthly fee of £12), plus the right to a small fridge, which costs £6.50 a month.
“The conditions of detention in an isolation wing are quite harsh,” former La Santé deputy director Flavie Rault told BFMTV. “You are alone all the time. The only contact you have is with the prison staff. You never meet another detainee for security reasons and there is a kind of social isolation that makes life difficult.”
Two police officers will be permanently stationed in nearby cells to protect the former president. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez told Europa 1 radio station: “The former president of the Republic has the right to protection due to his status. There is obviously a threat against him, and this protection is maintained while he is detained.”
It comes after a video showing an inmate threatening Sarkozy appeared online. The prisoner can be heard shouting: “Sarko, he is there, in an isolated area. He is completely alone in his cell. He has just arrived, on Tuesday, October 20, 2025. He is going to have a bad time. Right next door, below is solitary confinement. It is solitary confinement, he is right above. And we know everything: we are going to avenge Gaddafi. We know everything, Sarko. Ziad Takieddine, we know everything. Return the billions of dollars.”
Ziad Takieddine, a Lebanese arms dealer and key witness in the case, died under mysterious circumstances earlier this year while on the run. He was long rumored to be the intermediary between Gaddafi and Sarkozy.
Sarkozy continues to protest his innocence. As he was being led to prison, he wrote in X: “I have no doubt. The truth will prevail. But how crushing the price must have been.”
His cell is believed to be on the top floor, in the wing called QB4 or “VIP”, where high-profile and at-risk inmates are housed. The representative of the prison guards union, Wilfried Fonck, said Reuters That isolation aside, conditions in the cell block are no better than in the rest of the prison.
Despite police protection, Sarkozy’s lawyer, Jean-Michel Darrois, insisted that the former president is not receiving special treatment.
“He is in a cell of nine square meters (almost 97 square feet), there is noise all the time. All the prisoners are making noise, shouting, hitting the walls.” Darrois told BFMTV on Tuesday. “In principle, given the positions he has held, he should have a different status. He didn’t ask for it, so he doesn’t have it.”
Sarkozy’s wife, Carla Bruni, spoke to him by phone after his first night in prison, calling it “terrifying,” his lawyers said. Their relatives will be allowed three visits per week.
Sarkozy told the newspaper Le Figaro that he would bring three books – the maximum allowed – including The Count of Monte Cristo (in two volumes) and a biography of Jesus Christ. He also plans to write a book about his time in prison, his lawyers said.
In September, Sarkozy was found guilty of criminal conspiracy. Prosecutors said that between 2005 and 2007 he organized the transfer of up to €50m (£43m) from Libya to finance his campaign, allegations he has repeatedly denied. His legal team has filed an appeal and judges have two months to decide whether his sentence will stand.
