Nicolas Sarkozy Set to Write Prison Memoir Documenting Three Weeks Incarcerated
Nicolas Sarkozy is preparing a book next month named A Prisoner’s Diary, detailing his experience spent behind bars.
The announcement emerged less than two weeks following Sarkozy was released as he contests the court ruling on charges of unlawful coordination in a case to acquire presidential race money provided by the government of Muammar Gaddafi.
Prison Experience: Personal Reflections
“Inside jail there is nothing to see, and nothing to do,” he notes in an extract, suggesting the account centers around his musings from isolation instead of extensive analysis regarding the strained and struggling jail system in France.
“I forget silence, which doesn’t exist at the prison, where noise is endless commotion,” he states. “The din unfortunately never stops. But, just like the desert, one’s inner world is fortified in prison.”
Court Appearance: Sharing the Struggle
During his plea for freedom, he participated remotely from his cell, characterizing his incarceration as exhausting. He expressed in court: “I want to pay tribute the correctional officers, who are exceptionally humane, and who helped make this ordeal tolerable – because it is a nightmare.”
“I didn’t expect that in my seventies, I’d find myself behind bars. It’s a hardship I must endure. I confess it’s hard, deeply straining. It affects one on any prisoner as it’s exhausting.”
Unprecedented Situation
The former president, the ex-head of state from 2007 to 2012, became the inaugural former head of an EU country and the first leader since WWII of France to experience jail.
Ahead of his incarceration he mentioned he would use his time to write a book.
Books in Prison
It is not certain if he found the opportunity to review and analyze the three books he took into prison: a two-volume biography of Jesus and Alexandre Dumas’s novel The Count of Monte Cristo, a plot where a blameless person is sentenced to jail but escapes to take revenge.
Life in Confinement
He was held in solitary confinement due to safety concerns in a cell roughly 100 square feet including private facilities in the Paris jail located in the capital. Guards stayed in a neighbouring cell.
Reports indicated his diet consisted just yogurt during his stay worried that meals provided might have been spat on. Options were available to cook for himself but refused this, based on unnamed sources. Unclear remains whether Sarkozy will write about his dietary choices.
Lawyer’s Statements
The legal representative, Christophe Ingrain each day while he was in prison, told the release hearing he would be safer released than inside. “There were death threats, listened to yells after dark and emergency responses in a neighbouring cell when a prisoner self-harmed.”
Charges and Sentence
Sarkozy went to prison on 21 October after a French court sentenced him to five years in prison for illegal collaboration related to a plan to obtain political donations during his election campaign.
He denies wrongdoing and has appealed against the verdict, and a fresh trial planned for early next year.
