Nicolas Sarkozy, the president of France from 2007 to 2012, received a five-year sentence after being convicted in a campaign finance scandal.
The former French president Nicolas Sarkozy began his five-year jail term at a Paris prison on Tuesday, the first time in more than half a century an ex-head of state has been jailed in the country.
As he left his home this morning, Mr. Sarkozy greeted friends and supporters who shouted his name and sang the French national anthem. He then made his way to the prison by car, escorted by a police convoy.
“It is a fateful day for him, for France, for our institutions, because this incarceration is a shame,” one of his lawyers, Jean-Michel Darrois, told reporters in front of the prison.
Mr. Sarkozy was found guilty of conspiring to seek funding for his 2007 presidential campaign from the government of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the former Libyan strongman, and was handed a five-year sentence last month.
