Arya News - Nicolas Sarkozy has claimed he refused Emmanuel Macron’s offer to move him to a safer prison.
Nicolas Sarkozy has claimed he refused Emmanuel Macron’s offer to move him to a safer prison .
A month after his release from prison, Mr Sarkozy is set to publish The Diary of a Prisoner, chronicling the 20 days he spent behind bars at La Santé prison in Paris after he was found guilty of campaign funding offences.
Sarkozy says he agreed to a two-hour meeting with Mr Macron days before his imprisonment, despite his strained relations with the French president.
According to an excerpt from the book, released by RTL, Mr Macron appeared “troubled, even shocked” that his predecessor was due to go to jail.
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The president displayed “an impressive, likeable energy, but one that seemed to me both too late and, above all, rather disorganised”, Sarkozy said.
Mr Macron then demanded that Sarkozy change prisons because of safety concerns over his stay at La Santé, offering a new facility with apartments for prisoner families.
Nicolas Sarkozy with his wife, Carla Bruni, the model and singer, on his way to surrender himself at La Santé - Julien de Rosa/AFP via Getty Images
But Sarkozy says he refused, explaining: “I even specified to him that I would not accept ‘any preferential treatment’, as any modification was likely to cause controversy.”
Following his conversation with Mr Macron, two police officers from the VIP protection service were placed in the adjacent cell to Sarkozy’s at La Santé, where he was heckled and abused by other inmates, to give him 24-hour protection.
The former president remained in La Santé until he was released after serving just 20 days of his sentence. He said: “I was struck by the absence of any colour. Grey dominated everything, devoured everything, covered all surfaces.”
Emmanuel Macron appeared shocked that Nicolas Sarkozy, his predecessor as president of France, was going to jail - Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images
Sarkozy was found guilty in September of conspiring to finance his 2007 presidential campaign with funds from Muammar Gaddafi , the late Libyan dictator.
He was sentenced to five years in prison and banned from holding public office, becoming the first president in the history of the Fifth Republic to serve jail time. The appeals court granted his request for release as he waits to be retried next March.
Sarkozy also revealed that Marine Le Pen tried to strike up an alliance during a phone call after his sentencing.
He recalled the leader of the far-Right National Rally telling him: “Your voice carries weight with the popular electorate. Will you join any kind of ‘republican front’ in future elections?”
He added that he gave Ms Le Pen an “unambiguous” no.
Charles Kushner, the US ambassador to France and father of Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, also tried to visit Sarkozy in prison, the former president said, adding that he declined the visit on the advice of his lawyer.
The entrance to the La Santé prison - Ian Langsdon/AFP via Getty Images
During his incarceration, Sarkozy was assigned the prison number 320535 and ate mostly dairy products, mineral water and cereal bars. He was confined to a 120sq ft cell in solitary confinement for security reasons.
“I wrote with a ballpoint pen on a small plywood table, every day. I gave the pages to my lawyers, who gave them to my secretary to type them up. I wrote in one go, and after my release on a Monday, I finished the book in the following days,” he told Le Figaro.
While Sarkozy awaits his appeal on the Libyan financing charge, he is also being investigated for his consulting activities in Russia and the controversial awarding of the 2022 World Cup to Qatar .
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