Nicolas Sarkozy, unsurprisingly, was released on Monday, November 10, by the Paris Court of Appeal, under close judicial supervision. If his detention was “a nightmare”the hearing, by videoconference from the Health Prison in Paris, was painful. But the former head of state, sentenced to five years in prison for criminal conspiracy in the Libyan affair, obtained the essentials. He left prison around 4 p.m., in a car with tinted windows, escorted by two bikers.
He remains subject to strict judicial control: he no longer has the right to leave the territory and he must, at the risk of returning to prison, come into contact with any of his co-defendants, with any of the eight Libyan dignitaries, nor with any of the 17 people linked, even remotely, to the investigation.
Olivier Géron, the president of the correctional chamber of the court of appeal, added, uniquely in judicial annals, a ban on coming into contact with “the Minister of Justice, the members of his cabinet and any executive of the Ministry of Justice likely to have feedback”that is, reports from the attorneys general. The disavowal is scathing for Gérald Darmanin, the former spokesperson for Nicolas Sarkozy during his campaign for the presidency of the UMP, who had visited his friend the former president on October 29 in prison, and had been the only one not to see malice in it. The court is indeed wary of “previous record of the accused” which show “his ability to operate various State services notwithstanding the fact that he no longer exercises official activity”…
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