Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, a conservative, was applauded by supporters as he went to prison on Tuesday, protesting his innocence as he went and calling for the government to be dissolved for fresh national elections.
Nicolas Sarkozy departed his Paris home to travel to the maximum-security La Santé Prison on Tuesday, keeping an appointment made by the court after his sentencing to a five year incarceration earlier this month over a hotly contested campaign financing charge. Sarkozy and his lawyers have insisted the case is one of “false criminal conspiracy” and that other French politicians have been let off for doing much more, claiming the prosecution against him was one of lawfare driven by a desire for revenge.
The former conservative statesman was applauded, cheered, and greeted with supporters singing the French national anthem in Paris as he left his home on Tuesday morning, but was met with sardonic cries from inmates calling from their windows at La Santé as he arrived by car. He is the first President in the history of the Fifth French Republic — established by General Charles de Gaulle in 1958 — and the first leader of a European Union member state to be imprisoned.
In a statement published shortly before going to prison, Sarkozy addressed to the French people, decrying the “judicial scandal”, and said “I want to tell them with my unwavering strength that it is not a former President of the Republic who is being locked up this morning; it is an innocent man.”
Sarkozy said he felt no self pity but rather “profound sorrow for France” which has been “humiliated by vengeance”.
French conservative broadsheet Le Figaro reported Sarkozy and his legal team filed an application for review that could see the former President released within weeks. Otherwise, he could remain behind bars until next year, when his appeal is due to be heard. Controversially, instead of the five year prison term waiting until the appeals process is exhausted, the Paris judge in the case made an extraordinary ruling that it should be applied immediately.
A similar ruling was made against Marine Le Pen, also on a campaign funding case, immediately banning her from seeking public office despite looming elections and with an appeal in process. In that case, as with Sarkozy’s, sovereigntist Le Pen has alleged lawfare.
As his official motorcade leaves with security services for the Parisian prison of La Sante, Nicolas Sarkozy waves to the crowd from his car in Paris on Tuesday, October 21, 2025. The former French President was sentenced on September 25, 2025, by the Paris judicial court to five years in prison in the case of Libyan financing of his 2007 campaign. (Photo by Laurent Caron / Hans Lucas via AFP) (Photo by LAURENT CARON/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images)
Le Figaro also offers insight into Sarkozy’s state of mind as he goes into prison with final remarks to the paper from the former President before he reported to prison, revealing that at the recent meeting where he was handed details of his jail term, he came face-to-face with the case prosecutor. It is reported Sarkozy told the top lawyer: “History will remember that you were involved in a miscarriage of justice….you lied, saying there was evidence. I will not forget that”.
Sarkozy said “they wanted to make me disappear, and that makes me reborn” and, as his last political act as a free man, called for the government to be dissolved to allow new elections to unjam the now years-long French political crisis.
Asked what paperback books he would be reading in his first week in prison, Sarkozy replied “I’m taking The Count of Monte Cristo in two volumes and the biography of Jesus by Jean-Christian Petitfils”. The Count of Monte Cristo is, of course, Alexandre Dumas’ classic tale of a Frenchman accused of treason who escapes prison to get his revenge.
Sarkozy will also, it is stated, use his time in prison to write a book about his experience. This, the paper states, will inevitably take the form of a “call for France to rise again”.
The conviction of the former President was over breaches of campaign financing rules. While the court was unable to prove any money had ever changed hands, it found a member of staff in the Sarkozy Presidential Campaign staff had a meeting with individuals tied to the government of Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi. Sarzoky supported the ouster of Gaddafi during the Arab Spring and has maintained the “fake” documents the prosecution was based on were created by the “Gaddafi clan” as revenge.
While Sarkozy is the first President imprisoned in the history of the 67-year-old Fifth Republic, he is far from the first French President in the history of the country to have seen the inside of a prison cell. Napoleon III, who was Emperor of the French between 1852 and 1870, had also previously been President for four years and was imprisoned by the French state, albeit before his rise to power.
Sentenced to life imprisonment for attempting a coup against the French government, Napoleon fathered two children with a maid and after six years in jail he escaped by disguising himself as a wood cutter.
Napoleon III was also imprisoned as an ex-President, albeit not by the French state. After the Battle of Sedan of 1870, a total defeat, the Emperor and the entire French Army were taken prisoner by the Prussians. He was held for six months before going into exile in the United Kingdom. A future French President, General Patrice de MacMahon, was also captured and held prisoner at the same battle.
Another future French President, Jules Grévy, was also imprisoned in this era. An opponent of Napoleon III, Grévy was jailed during the 1851 coup to install Napoleon as Emperor.
The imprisonment of French Presidents, past or future, has tended to be focussed around the transitions between constitutions. For example, interwar President Albert Lebrun was imprisoned by the German occupiers during the Second World War when the third French Republic was replaced by the Fascist-appeasing Vichy regime.
The wartime French President Philippe Pétain was then imprisoned in turn after the Allies liberated France in 1945.
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