4 days ago
9
FORMER French President Nicolas Sarkozy has released a prison memoir detailing his surprisingly brief stint behind bars.
Sarkozy, 70, was imprisoned for a total of 20 days after being found guilty of obtaining illegal campaign funding from Libyan Moammar Gadhafi in 2007.
Sign up for The Sun newsletter
Thank you!
His dramatic release came after a court in Paris examined his request for release – with prosecutors voicing their support for him.
The appeals court said: “The court declares the application for release admissible and places you under judicial supervision.”
He has since released a book, entitled “Diary of a Prisoner, ” describing his three-week stretch in La Santé prison.
Despite his damaged reputation, it did not stop tens of people queueing up to get their hands on an autographed copy.
“I want to make it clear that this is not a novel,” Sarkozy wrote in the introduction – despite the book being 216 pages long.
Sarkozy describes his prison cell as being similar to a “low-end hotel, except for the armoured door and bars”.
Early on in his stay, the ex-politician tried to open a window and “immediately regretted it” because of the noise it caused.
“A prisoner was relentlessly striking the bars of his cell with a metal object,” Sarkozy wrote.
“This racket lasted several minutes. It seemed endless to me.
“The atmosphere was threatening. Welcome to hell!”
Sarkozy then goes on to describe a “neighbouring inmate [who] spent part of time singing ‘The Lion King’ and the other part pounding on the bars of his cell with a spoon”.
If this wasn’t bad enough, Sarkozy then described the inadequacy of his sleeping arrangements.
“I had never felt a harder mattress, not even during my military service,” he wrote.
“The pillows were made of a strange material, perhaps plastic, and the blankets were blankets in name only.”
The former President was able to sleep until 7am on his first night despite wrestling with fact that his “future neighbours would be, depending on the case, Islamist terrorists, rapists, murderers, or drug traffickers”.
This is something he labelled “a delightful prospect”.
Lunch was served at 11:30am every day, but Sarkozy does not believe he “missed much by declining the meal offered in small plastic trays, which, without meaning any offense to whoever had prepared them, were not very appealing”.
He later said that the smell of the food made him feel “nauseous” and lamented the “soggy baguette” on offer.
To combat his hunger, he instead consumed “dairy products, cereal bars, mineral water, apple juice and a few sweet treats”.
When he wasn’t enjoying the delights of the prison canteen, Sarkozy spent most of his day reading.
Before entering, he told Le Figaro that he was taking with him a copy of “The Count of Monte Cristo” which recounts the tale of a man who is falsely imprisoned for treason.
The showers were also a sight to behold.
“Perhaps out of fear that an inmate might hang himself, there was no showerhead, only a thin trickle of water,” Sarkozy wrote.
The book also includes details of his meeting with Emmanuel Macron at the Élysée Palace before his starting his sentence.
The current French President allegedly told him that he would be transferred to another, safer prison.
However, Sarkozy supposedly told him that he was not interested, refusing any form of “preferential treatment”.
He also uses the book as a means of protesting his “complete innocence”.
“As long as I have breath in my body, I will fight with all my strength to prove it, no matter how long it takes.”
Sarkozy will now serve the remainder of his sentence at home after winning an appeal to do so.
The politician is now expected to wear an electronic tag while living back at home with his third wife, Carla Bruni.
The appeal against the overall sentence will be take place from 16 March to 3 June 2026.
English (US) · 