The prison doors opened today for Nicolas Sarkozy , sentenced a month ago to five years for criminal association in the trial over Libyan funding for his 2007 presidential campaign.

At 70, he is the first former President of the European Union to be incarcerated . He left his home for the Santé penitentiary in Paris, accompanied by his wife, Carla Bruni. As he left, he greeted around a hundred supporters and friends who, at the instigation of his son Louis, gathered this morning outside his home to greet him and cheer him on while singing the Marseillaise.

His lawyers will file a motion for parole today, which the judge and the appeals court are required to respond to within two months.

"They wanted to make me disappear, and this makes me reborn," Sarkozy said in an interview with the newspaper Le Figaro. "My life is a novel," the former president commented.

Sarkozy will be placed in an 11-square-meter cell with a sealed window. He will also be able to purchase a floor brush. He will be placed in solitary confinement because the prison has no other means to guarantee his safety along with the other inmates . He will obviously not be allowed a cell phone, but he will be allowed access to a small television . Since it is cold in the cell, he will be allowed a scarf no longer than one meter . He will also be allowed a rounded knife and a fork. He will have access to a stove for cooking and will be able to purchase food from a special catalogue .

According to Le Figaro, the former president has already been warned that the food in the canteen is "inedible." He will be allowed to go out for one hour a day, into the prison's inner courtyard . Three guards will let him in and out. Sarkozy will be entitled to two visits a week , including those of his wife, Carla Bruni Sarkozy, and his children, and will be able to speak without limits with his lawyers.

He is also allowed three softcover books a week . " I bring The Count of Monte Cristo in two volumes and Jean-Christian Petitfils' biography of Jesus ," he confided. He also intends to write a book about his experiences in prison.

Emmanuel Macron received him at the Elysée Palace in recent days: "I have always publicly expressed very clear opinions on the independence of the judiciary in my role. But it was normal, from a human point of view, that I should receive one of my predecessors in this context, " the French president stated.

(Unioneonline)

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