Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced this Friday the publication on December 10 of the book “Le journal d’un prisonnier” (Diary of a prisoner) about his 20 days spent in prison.
Sarkozy entered the Parisian Santé prison on October 21 for a conviction for illicit association in the case over the financing of his 2007 electoral campaign.
But that day he requested parole, as the law allows for those over 70 years of age, and on November 10 he was able to leave, so he will wait free for the appeal trial scheduled for March.
“In prison, there is nothing to see and nothing to do. I forget the silence that does not exist in the Santé, where there is a lot to listen to,” reads an excerpt from the book published on the social network X.
“The noise there, unfortunately, is constant. As in the desert, the inner life is strengthened in prison,” writes the former president, according to the short fragment.
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Sarkozy’s conviction
Sarkozy was convicted of allowing his associates to approach the Libya of Muammar Gaddafi, who died in 2011, to obtain funds to illegally finance his victorious 2007 campaign.
Although the process did not demonstrate that the money was used as a “last resort”, the court stressed that it did leave Libya, which is why it convicted him of illicit association.
His conviction was accompanied by controversy, since the court ordered him to be imprisoned without waiting for the outcome of his appeal. The husband of the singer Carla Bruni pleads innocent.
The conservative politician became the first former French head of state to end up behind bars since the end of World War II, and the first from a country already within the European Union.
This conviction is not the first. He adds two more for corruption, influence peddling and illegal campaign financing in 2012, and he also has more open cases.