Sarkozy preps for five-year prison term

Ex-French president guilty of conspiracy

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A court on Thursday sentenced former French president Nicolas Sarkozy to five years in prison over a scheme for late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi to fund his 2007 presidential run.

In a verdict that will make the rightwinger the first French postwar leader to serve jail time, the Paris criminal court convicted Sarkozy, 70, on criminal conspiracy charges.

However, it acquitted the former head of state, France's president from 2007 to 2012, of corruption and personally accepting illegal campaign financing.

The court ordered that Sarkozy should be placed in custody at a later date, with prosecutors to inform him on Oct 13 when he should go to prison.

He was also fined €100,000 and banned from holding public office. He has been convicted already in two separate trials but always avoided jail, in one case serving his graft sentence with an electronic tag, which has since been removed.