The former French president has recently started serving a five-year term in a Paris prison
Inmates in Paris’ La Sante prison have threatened former French President Nicolas Sarkozy with revenge for the death of late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, a cell phone video from the facility appears to show.
Sarkozy, 70, began serving his five-year sentence on Tuesday after a Paris court found him guilty of criminal conspiracy in a scheme to fund his 2007 presidential campaign with money from Gaddafi, against whom he later led a NATO-backed regime change operation which destroyed Libya and led to Gaddafi’s death.
Videos taken from La Sante began circulating on Tuesday, in which purported inmates called out threats and cat-called Sarkozy, who is serving his time in the prison’s solitary confinement wing.
“We will avenge Gaddafi! We know everything, Sarko! Return the billions of dollars!” a man shouted in one video posted on social media. “He’s all alone in his cell. He just arrived… he’s going to have a bad time.”
A viral video shows a prisoner confronting Nicolas Sarkozy, saying, “We’ll avenge Gaddafi. Give back the billions.” The former French president, jailed for conspiracy, is accused of taking Libyan money before leading NATO’s 2011 war that killed Gaddafi. pic.twitter.com/KlAISnFVSX
French Interior Minister Laurent Nunez has stressed that due to the danger, two police officers of the security detail assigned to former presidents will be permanently stationed in cells adjacent to Sarkozy’s.
“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,” Nunez told Europe 1 radio on Wednesday.
Sarkozy, who led France between 2007 and 2012, has denied all charges against him, insisting that they are politically motivated. His legal team has filed a request for early release, pending appeal proceedings.
The probe into Sarkozy began in 2013, following claims by Gaddafi’s son Saif al-Islam that his father had provided the ex-president’s campaign some €50 million ($58 million).
In 2011, Sarkozy played a leading role in a NATO coalition intervention which led to Gaddafi’s ouster and death, plunging Libya into chaos and deterioration into a failed state.
