Why France's ex-President Sarkozy may be released from prison after just 20 days

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PARIS (AP) — A court in Paris will decide whether to release France's former President Nicolas Sarkozy from prison on Monday, just 20 days after he was incarcerated.

He was sentenced to five years in prison following his conviction for criminal conspiracy in a scheme to finance his winning 2007 campaign with funds from Libya.

Sarkozy, 70, is the first former president of modern France sentenced to actual time behind bars. He was previously convicted on corruption charges, but was ordered to wear an electric monitor rather than serve a prison sentence.

Sarkozy's legal team is appealing his conviction and has also filed a request for an early release. An appeal trial is to take place at a later date, possibly in the spring.

On Monday, a court in Paris is to examine his request for release, with a decision expected later that day.

The former president, who served from 2007 to 2012, says he’s innocent and contests both the conviction and the decision to incarcerate him pending appeal.

The Paris court found Sarkozy guilty on Sept. 25 and said the prison sentence was effective immediately. But as soon as he was incarcerated on Oct. 21, his legal team filed a request for an early release.

A court is to make a decision Monday based on article 144 of France’s criminal code, which states that release should be the general rule pending appeal, while detention remains the exception — for example for those considered dangerous or at risk of fleeing to another country, or to protect evidence or prevent pressure on witnesses.

It does not involve the motives for the sentencing.

During Monday's hearing, Sarkozy is expected to provide guarantees he will comply with justice requirements for conditional release.

If granted, he would be placed under judicial supervision and could be released from La Santé prison in Paris within a few hours.

In its Sept. 25 ruling, a Paris court said Sarkozy, as a presidential candidate and interior minister, used his position “to prepare corruption at the highest level” from 2005 to 2007 with the aim of financing his presidential campaign with funds from Libya — then led by longtime ruler Moammar Gadhafi.

The panel of three judges said that Sarkozy’s closest associates, Claude Guéant and Brice Hortefeux, held secret meetings in 2005 with Abdullah al-Senoussi, Gadhafi’s brother-in-law and intelligence chief, despite the fact that he was “convicted of acts of terrorism committed mostly against French and European citizens.”

Al-Senoussi is considered the mastermind of attacks on a Pan Am jumbo jet over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988 and a French airliner over Niger the following year — causing hundreds of deaths. He was convicted in absentia and handed a life sentence by a Paris court in 1999 for the attack on the French UTA Flight 772.

The court said a complex financial scheme was put in place, although it said there’s no evidence the money transferred from Libya to France ended up being used in Sarkozy’s 2007 campaign itself.

Sarkozy consistently said he is innocent and the victim of “a plot” staged by some people linked to the Libyan government, including what he described as the “Gadhafi clan.”

He suggested that the allegations of campaign financing were retaliation for his call — as France’s president — for Gadhafi’s removal.

Sarkozy was one of the first Western leaders to push for military intervention in Libya in 2011, when Arab Spring pro-democracy protests swept the Arab world. Gadhafi was toppled and killed in the uprising that same year, ending his four-decade rule of the North African country.

In addition, Sarkozy notes the court cleared him of three other charges — passive corruption, illegal campaign financing and concealing the embezzlement of public funds.

He also points to the court's failure to establish a direct link between the money from Libya and his campaign financing as further proof of his innocence.

Monday's hearing is not the only legal case pending against Sarkozy.

France’s highest court, the Court of Cassation, is set to issue its ruling on Nov. 26 over a separate conviction for illegal campaign financing of Sarkozy’s unsuccessful 2012 reelection bid.

An appeals court in Paris last year sentenced Sarkozy to a year in prison, of which six months were suspended. He is accused of having spent almost twice the maximum legal amount of 22.5 million euros on the reelection bid that he lost to Socialist Francois Hollande.

Sarkozy denied the allegations.

The former president also is at the center of another judicial investigation related to the Libya financing case.

French judges filed preliminary charges in 2023 against him for his alleged role in an apparent attempt to pressure a witness in order to clear him. Sarkozy’s wife, supermodel-turned singer Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, was also given preliminary charges last year for alleged involvement.

The witness, Ziad Takieddine, was central in accusations Sarkozy received illegal payments from the Libyan government. He later retracted his statement.

Sarkozy was found guilty of corruption and influence peddling by both a Paris court in 2021 and an appeals court in 2023 for trying to bribe a magistrate in exchange for information about a legal case in which he was implicated. The Court of Cassation later upheld the verdict.

Sarkozy was sentenced to wear an electronic monitoring bracelet for one year. He was granted a conditional release in May due to his age, which allowed him to remove the electronic tag after just over three months.