The Former French President to Pen Prison Memoir Detailing Three Weeks In Custody
Nicolas Sarkozy will soon publish a personal account in the coming weeks called A Prisoner’s Diary, which recounts the period spent in custody.
The announcement emerged less than two weeks after Sarkozy left prison while he contests his conviction related to illegal collaboration in a case to secure presidential race money linked to the leadership of Muammar Gaddafi.
Life Behind Bars: Solitary Musings
“In prison visibility is limited, with little to occupy time,” he writes in an extract, suggesting the memoir is more about his musings while in isolation as opposed to wider commentary regarding the strained and struggling jail system in France.
“Silence escapes me, which is missing in La Santé, where one hears a lot to hear,” he continues. “The racket unfortunately never stops. Yet, similar to barren lands, inner life is strengthened in prison.”
Freedom Plea: Describing the Ordeal
While appealing for release, Sarkozy participated remotely from inside the facility, describing his time inside as gruelling. He expressed in court: “I want to pay tribute those working in the jail, who are exceptionally humane, and who have made this ordeal tolerable – as it truly is one.”
“I didn’t expect that in my seventies, I would end up incarcerated. It’s a trial forced upon me. It’s challenging, I acknowledge, it’s very hard. It has an impact on any prisoner as it’s exhausting.”
First of Its Kind
The former president, the ex-head of state from 2007 to 2012, set a precedent as past president from the EU and the first postwar leader of France to serve time in prison.
Prior to imprisonment he declared he intended to spend the period for authoring a memoir.
Reading Material
Unconfirmed is if he found the opportunity to review and analyze the three books he brought with him: a life story of Jesus spanning two books together with Dumas’s work The Count of Monte Cristo, where a blameless person is imprisoned but escapes to seek vengeance.
Daily Reality
The former leader was placed in solitary confinement to protect him in a space roughly 100 square feet with his own shower and toilet in the Paris jail located in the capital. Security personnel stayed in a neighbouring cell.
Reports indicated his diet consisted only yoghurts during his stay due to concerns prison cuisine could have been tampered with. Options were available to cook for himself yet he declined, as per accounts. It is uncertain whether Sarkozy will write about his dietary choices.
Defense Viewpoint
Sarkozy’s lawyer, Christophe Ingrain daily during the incarceration, informed the court he would be safer outside jail than inside. “He has faced menacing messages, heard shouts after dark plus rapid actions next door when a prisoner self-harmed.”
Legal Proceedings
He entered custody in late October following a French court sentenced him to a five-year sentence for illegal collaboration related to a plan to obtain election financing for his presidential bid.
He maintains his innocence and has appealed against the verdict, with a new trial planned for the coming spring.
