The right-wing leader from 2007 to 2012 was found guilty last month of seeking to acquire funding from Moamer Kadhafi’s Libya for the campaign that saw him elected.
Christophe Ingrain, one of Sarkozy’s lawyers, said a request had been immediately filed for his release pending an appeal but he would still spend at least three weeks to one month behind bars.
In a defiant message posted on social media as he was being transferred, Sarkozy denied any wrongdoing.
Two security officers will accompany Sarkozy in prison and are stationed in a neighbouring cell, three sources told AFP, confirming a report by broadcasters TF1 and LCI.
After his September 25 verdict, Sarkozy had said he would “sleep in prison but with my head held high.”
“Nicolas, Nicolas! Free Nicolas,“ they shouted as he left his home, holding hands with his wife, the singer Carla Bruni.
He told Le Figaro newspaper he would be taking with him a biography of Jesus and a copy of “The Count of Monte Cristo,“ the famed novel in which an innocent man is sentenced to jail but escapes to take revenge.
In solitary confinement, prisoners are allowed out of their cells for one walk a day, alone, in a small yard.
Bruni and one of his lawyers visited him Tuesday evening.
Sarkozy has faced a flurry of legal woes since losing his re-election bid in 2012, already being convicted in two other cases.
In another, France’s top court is to rule next month in a case in which he is accused of illegal campaign financing in 2012.
Investigators believe that in return, Kadhafi was promised help to restore his international image after Tripoli was blamed for the 1988 bombing of a passenger jet over Lockerbie, Scotland, and another over Niger in 1989, killing hundreds of passengers.
But it did not conclude that he received or used the funds for his campaign, and acquitted him on charges of embezzling Libyan public funds, passive corruption and illicit financing of an electoral campaign.
Sarkozy had already been stripped of France’s highest distinction, his Legion of Honour, following the earlier graft conviction. – AFP
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