For the first time in the history of the Fifth Republic, a former French president has been definitively sentenced to prison for breaking the law. On Wednesday, December 18, the Cour de Cassation, France’s highest court of appeals, rejected Nicolas Sarkozy’s appeal in 2023 for corruption and influence peddling. He was sentenced to a three-year jail term, two of which were suspended and one that was to take the form of home detention with an electronic tag allowing his movements to be monitored. That verdict had already been upheld once, by an appeals court, last year.
The appeals lodged by Sarkozy’s long-serving lawyer, Thierry Herzog, and former high judge Gilbert Azibert were also rejected by the court. They received the same sentence as Sarkozy.
As soon as the court’s ruling was announced, Sarkozy declared, through his lawyer Patrice Spinosi, that he would be taking his case “to the European Court of Human Rights [ECHR] (…) to obtain the guarantee of rights that the French judges have denied him.”
“We have very serious chances of obtaining a condemnation against France in three or four years’ time. We could then refer the matter again to the French courts, which would be obliged to review Sarkozy’s conviction,” Spinosi claimed.
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