The former French president Nicolas Sarkozy will have two police officers stationed in nearby cells while he is in prison to ensure he comes to no harm, France’s interior minister has said.
Sarkozy arrived at La Santé prison in Paris on Tuesday to begin a five-year sentence after being convicted of conspiring to raise campaign funds from Libya – a stunning downfall for a man who led the country between 2007 and 2012.
On Wednesday the interior minister, Laurent Nuñez, told Europe 1 radio that two police officers from a security detail protecting former presidents would be stationed permanently in neighbouring cells throughout Sarkozy’s incarceration.
“The former president of the republic is entitled to protection because of his status. There is obviously a threat against him, and this protection is being maintained while he is in detention,” Nuñez said.
He said the officers would remain at Sarkozy’s side “as long as it is necessary”. The officers will be members of a team doing rotating shifts in the prison, French media reported.
Sarkozy will be held in La Santé’s isolation unit, where inmates are housed in single cells and kept apart during outdoor activities, meaning he should not be in contact with other inmates.
Prison guard unions protested over the presence of police inside the prison. Nicolas Peyrin, of the CGT union, said La Santé staff were perfectly able to ensure inmate safety and that police were not necessary. “There is no added value,” he told BFM television.
Wilfried Fonck, the head of another prison guard union, told RTL radio: “They’re basically telling us we don’t know how to do our jobs.”
He said: “Today we have two civilians inside a prison who shouldn’t be there,” and who don’t know how the system works. “I’ve never seen anything like it in 25 years on the job.”
Sarkozy’s lawyers have filed a request for early release, pending his appeal trial, and said they expected this request to be reviewed in about a month. They said they hoped to get him freed on early release by Christmas.
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Sarkozy has consistently denied wrongdoing and has called the case politically motivated.
Reuters and Agence France-Presse in Paris contributed to this report.
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