Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy has begun serving a five-year prison sentence after being convicted of conspiring to finance his 2007 presidential campaign with funds allegedly provided by Muammar Gaddafi, the late Libyan dictator. The development marks a historic first — the only time since World War II leader Philippe Pétain’s 1945 treason conviction that a French head of state has gone to jail.

Under heavy police escort, Sarkozy, 70, arrived at La Santé Prison in Paris on Tuesday morning, where he was assigned a 9-square-metre isolation cell for security reasons. Despite maintaining his innocence, the former president struck a tone of defiance before surrendering.

“I have no doubt. Truth will prevail. But how crushing the price will have been,” he wrote in a post on social media. “Do not feel sorry for me… but this morning I feel deep sorrow for a France humiliated by a will for revenge.”

Crowds of supporters gathered outside his home in Paris’s 16th arrondissement after his son Louis Sarkozy called for solidarity. Another son, Pierre, urged demonstrators to respond “with a message of love — nothing else, please.”

Inside prison, Sarkozy has declined special privileges. His cell is equipped with a bed, desk, toilet, shower, and a small television, and he is permitted one hour of solitary exercise daily. In an interview with La Tribune earlier this month, he said he was “not afraid of prison” and would “keep [his] head held high, even at the prison gates.”

Sarkozy’s sentence stems from a long-running investigation into allegations that millions of euros in illicit Libyan cash were funneled into his 2007 campaign through intermediaries linked to Gaddafi’s regime.

Although the court did not find evidence that Sarkozy personally received the funds, it concluded that he knowingly conspired with close aides Brice Hortefeux and Claude Guéant to arrange the payments. Both men were accused of meeting Gaddafi’s intelligence chief in 2005, reportedly through Franco-Lebanese fixer Ziad Takieddine, who died shortly before the verdict was announced.

While Sarkozy has appealed the ruling, maintaining his legal presumption of innocence, the court ordered his immediate imprisonment, citing “the exceptional seriousness of the facts” and “the damage done to the integrity of the French Republic.”

Before entering custody, Sarkozy was received privately at the Élysée Palace by President Emmanuel Macron, who later told reporters that the meeting was “a normal human gesture” toward his predecessor.

Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin also expressed concern for Sarkozy’s welfare, promising to visit him in prison to ensure his safety and to “verify the proper functioning of the facility.” “I cannot be insensitive to a man’s distress,” Darmanin said.

Sarkozy reportedly took two books with him into prison: a biography of Jesus and Alexandre Dumas’s The Count of Monte Cristo — the tale of a man wrongly imprisoned who triumphs over betrayal.

For supporters, the choice captures the former president’s enduring defiance and his vow to clear his name. As one rallying supporter outside La Santé put it:
“He sees himself as Dantès — a man punished by power, waiting for justice to return.”