The former French president was sentenced to five years for criminal campaign conspiracy three weeks ago
Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy was granted conditional release from prison on Monday, less than three weeks after he began serving a five-year sentence over a plot to obtain secret campaign funds from the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.
Sarkozy, who was found guilty of criminal conspiracy to finance his 2007 election campaign in September, has been moved to house arrest.
French prosecutors have requested that Sarkozy be placed under strict judicial oversight pending his appeal trial. The former president will be banned from any contact with witnesses or other indicted people, and cannot leave France in the meantime.
Sarkozy has consistently denied any wrongdoing.
“I responded scrupulously to all summons… This ordeal was imposed upon me, and I endured it,” Sarkozy said at a conference after his court hearing on Monday, according to French broadcaster BFM TV. “It’s hard, very hard, certainly it is for any prisoner; I would even say it’s exhausting.”
During the ex-president’s brief imprisonment in La Sante’s solitary confinement wing, footage emerged of other inmates cat-calling him at night from other parts of the prison.
Some of the videos included threats to “avenge Gaddafi.”
Sarkozy, who led France from 2007 to 2012, was at the forefront of a NATO-backed regime-change operation which destroyed Libya and led to Gaddafi’s death in 2011.
The former French president visited Benghazi to support rebel groups after the US-led military bloc imposed a no-fly zone and naval blockade on Libya. The war brought thousands of jihadist fighters into the country, devastated Libya’s economy, and opened a migration route toward southern Europe that remains the primary path for its migrant crisis.
