Nicolas Sarkozy will become the first former French president in living memory to be imprisoned when he is expected to begin a five-year sentence Tuesday in Paris’ La Santé prison.

Convicted of criminal conspiracy in a scheme to finance his 2007 election campaign with funds from Libya, Sarkozy maintains his innocence. Regardless, he will be admitted to serve his time in a prison that has held some of the most high-profile inmates since the 19th century. They include Capt. Alfred Dreyfus, wrongly convicted of treason because he was Jewish, and the Venezuelan militant known as Carlos the Jackal, who carried out several attacks on French soil. 

Sarkozy told Le Figaro newspaper that he expects to be held in solitary confinement, where he would be kept away from all other prisoners for security reasons. Another possibility is that he is held in the prison’s section for “vulnerable″ inmates, colloquially known as the VIP section.

Former La Santé inmates described their experiences and what the former president might expect to face. The prison, which was inaugurated in 1867, has been fully renovated in recent years.

“It’s not Nicolas Sarkozy, president of the Republic, that’s coming … It’s a man and he will live exactly the same thing that everyone'' does, Pierre Botton, a former businessman-turned-author who was imprisoned in La Santé’s vulnerable section between 2020 and 2022 for misappropriation of funds from a charitable organization, told The Associated Press.

In an unprecedented judgment, the Paris judge ruled that Sarkozy would start to serve prison time without waiting for his appeal to be heard, due to “the seriousness of the disruption to public order caused by the offense.”

Sarkozy to hold his ‘head high’

The former president has denied any wrongdoing and protested the decision that he should be imprisoned pending appeal.

“I’m not afraid of prison. I’ll hold my head high, including in front of the doors of La Santé,” Sarkozy told La Tribune Dimanche newspaper. “I'll fight till the end.”

La Tribune Dimanche reports Sarkozy has his prison bag ready with clothes and 10 family photos he is allowed to bring.

Sarkozy also told Le Figaro newspaper he would bring three books — the maximum allowed — including “The Count of Monte Cristo” in two volumes and a biography of Jesus Christ. The hero of “The Count of Monte Cristo,” by French author Alexandre Dumas, escapes from an island prison where he spent 14 years before seeking revenge. 

One of Sarkozy’s sons, Louis, called for a rally Tuesday morning in support of his father in the high-end Paris neighborhood where Sarkozy lives with his wife Carla Bruni-Sarkozy. The supermodel-turned-singer has shared photos of Sarkozy’s children and songs in his honor on her social media feeds since his conviction.

Under the ruling, the 70-year-old Sarkozy will only be able to file a request for release to the appeals court once he is behind bars, and judges will then have up to two months to process the request.

9-square-meter cells

The National Financial Prosecutor’s office told Sarkozy the specifics of his detention last Monday, but details have not been made public. Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin confirmed that Sarkozy will enter La Santé on Tuesday and that he'll personally visit him to make sure security conditions are met. 

In the so-called VIP section, Sarkozy could have his own room in one of 18 identical 9-square-meter cells (96.8 square feet) in a wing separated from other general prison inmates. 

Botton, who says he has known Sarkozy for decades, expressed doubt that the former president will be accorded many special privileges in prison. “Even if you are president of the Republic, even if you are a very rich man, you decide nothing.”

Based on his own experience inside La Santé, about which he wrote the book “QB4,″ Botton described what Sarkozy might expect. After being processed, convicts are handed personal kit by the guards and then led to their cells.

“They will open the cell, and (Sarkozy) will discover where he will go,” he said. Botton described the cell he’d lived in La Santé: “A small 70-centimeter (2 feet 4 inches) bed fixed to the floor, a hot plate, a pay refrigerator, a pay TV.”

He said that inmates’ rooms in the VIP section were equipped with fixed landline phones they can use to make calls, which are recorded by prison authorities, but they cannot receive calls on the same line.

The shock of incarceration

Patrick Balkany, a longtime friend of Sarkozy who spent five months in La Santé for tax evasion in 2019-2020, described the first hours of newly admitted inmates.

“They’re going to take his photo, to make him a card because over there we’re a number, we’re no longer a person with a name,” he told RTL radio.

Then, “if he’s considered like any other inmate, he undresses and his clothes are searched to make sure he doesn’t have any prohibited items on him,” Balkany said.

“The hardest part is when you arrive in your cell, it’s a shock,” he added. 

Botton, also, recalled the shock he experienced when his affluent life crumbled when he was sent to prison the first time. “I went for my first time from my 1,200 square meter (around 13,000 square feet) mansion to 9 square meters,'' he said. 

From having a private staff of 11 people outside prison, he found himself cleaning a filthy cell when he arrived, he said. “That’s what we call the shock of incarceration.''

“When you are at 7 p.m., you are in jail, alone, and you heard that everything is locked, you are alone,” Botton says. “Everything is finished. The game is finished.”

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AP Writer Sylvie Corbet contributed.

– Jeffrey Schaeffer and Nicolas Garriga, The Associated Press