Lawyers aim to make Sarkozy's jail time 'as short as possible'

Lawyers for the former French president Nicolas Sarkozy have said they will try to ensure he serves as little time in prison as possible, after he was sentenced to five years for criminal conspiracy over a scheme to get election campaign funds from the regime of the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

- Angelique Chrisafis

“We're going to make sure that his incarceration will be as short as possible," Sarkozy’s lawyer Jean-Michel Darrois told the BFMTV news channel yesterday, after he became the first French president obliged to go to jail.

Sarkozy, who was the president of France from 2007 to 2012, has lodged an appeal against his conviction, but a special provision by judges means he must begin a jail term in the coming weeks while any appeal process goes ahead.

Henri Guaino, a Sarkozy ally who once served as his special adviser, told RTL radio that Sarkozy’s conviction was “a humiliation for the state and its institutions” and urged the centrist president, Emmanuel Macron, to pardon Sarkozy so he could avoid prison.

Macron has not commented on the conviction and sentence.

Top figures in Sarkozy’s rightwing Les Républicains party have sent messages of public support but, amid rising distrust of the political class, have stopped short of calling for any kind of pardon.