Sarkozy under police guard in prison after death threats

Two police officers have moved into the prison cell next door to Nicolas Sarkozy following threats to kill him.

- PETER ALLEN IN PARIS

The development came after the former French president spent a “frightening” first night in La Sante, the high-security jail in Paris. Sarkozy, 70, was incarcerated on Tuesday after being sentenced to five years in prison for conspiring to accept laundered cash from Muammar Gaddafi, the late Libyan dictator.

Within hours, a video appeared online in which a fellow inmate shouts: “We’re going to avenge Gaddafi. We know everything, Sarko ... we know everything. Give back the billions of dollars.”

Yesterday, a source at the interior ministry confirmed that two officers from the SDLP, the VIP protection service, were occupying the “cell next door to the former president’s for 24 hours a day”.

Eric Ciotti, president of Sarkozy’s conservative party, The Republicans, said: “It is completely legitimate that the security of a former president of the republic be ensured everywhere, at all times, in all locations, especially since the threats against him will be much greater in the circles he finds himself in.

“I saw images of him being threatened with death upon his arrival. His security must be guaranteed. This incarceration is a terrible ordeal for his family. I think of the ordeal they are going through.” One of them, Jean-Michel Darrois, explained: "I saw him in the visiting room, we stayed together for a long time. He is the man everyone knows - strong, dynamic, a fighter. He has brought two books to read: The Count of Monte Cristo, about revenge, and The Life of Jesus Christ, about the resurrection."