Ex-French President Sarkozy Returns Home From Prison

• The car carrying the former president drove past reporters flocking

Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy has arrived at his home in Paris’ 16th arrondissement after being released from La Sante Prison where he served a sentence in a campaign funding case, according to broadcast by the LCI television channel.

The territory around his house was cordoned off by the police to bar reporters from approaching it. The car carrying the former president drove past reporters flocking along the road and stopped at the entrance. Sarkozy quickly got out of the car, saying nothing to the press.

Earlier in the day, Paris’ Court of Appeals upheld the motion by Sarkozy’s lawyers and sanctioned his release under judicial supervision. Sarkozy’s judicial supervision conditions will include bans on leaving France and contacting any acting French justice minister, including Gerald Darmanin, who visited him in prison. Hearings of an appeal against Sarkozy’s conviction are scheduled for March 2026.

On September 25, Sarkozy, 70, who served as French president from 2007 to 2012, was found guilty of complicity in a criminal conspiracy in the Libyan funding case but acquitted of concealing the embezzlement of public funds and passive corruption. However, the court did not establish that the 2007 election campaign was illegally financed. Sarkozy was sentenced to five years in prison and placed in solitary confinement at Paris’ La Sante prison where he spent 21 days.

@TASS