Nicolas Sarkozy Former president ordered to jail

France’s former president Nicolas Sarkozy has been ordered to go to jail next week after a court last month sentenced him to five years in prison for criminal conspiracy over a scheme to obtain election campaign funds from Libya’s Gaddafi regime.

- Angelique Chrisafis

Sarkozy, president between 2007 and 2012, was summoned to meet state prosecutors yesterday. They told him he must present himself at the entrance of La Santé prison in the south of Paris on 21 October to begin his sentence.

The 70-year-old will be the first French postwar leader and the first former head of a EU country to go to jail. He had already become the first former French head of state forced to wear an electronic tag after being convicted in a separate case of corruption and influence peddling over illegal attempts to secure favours from a judge. In that case, Sarkozy was given a one-year prison term but was able to serve it with an electronic tag. He wore the tag for three months before being granted conditional release.