Sarkozy under extra police protection in prison after inmate threatens to kill him to ‘avenge Gaddafi’
Two police officers have moved into the prison cell next door to former French president Nicolas Sarkozy follow threats to kill him, it has emerged.
The dramatic development followed the 70-year-old spending a ‘frightening’ first night in La Santé, the high-security jail in Paris.
He was incarcerated on Tuesday, following a five-year sentence for conspiring to accept laundered cash from the late Libyan dictator, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.
Within hours, a video appeared online in which a fellow inmate shouts: “We know everything, Sarko… we know everything. Give back the billions of dollars.”
On Wednesday, a source at France’s Interior Ministry confirmed they had ordered two officers from the VIP Protection Service, the SDLP, to occupy the “cell next door to the former president’s for 24 hours a day.”
This led to Éric Ciotti, president of Sarkozy’s conservative party, The Republicans, expressing his concerns about death threats.
Mr Ciotti said: “It is completely legitimate that the security of a former President of the Republic be ensured everywhere, at all times, in all locations.
“Especially since the threats against him will be much greater in the circles he finds himself in.
“I saw images of him being threatened with death upon his arrival. His security must be guaranteed.
“This incarceration is a terrible ordeal for his family. I think of the ordeal they are going through.”
Carla Bruni, Sarkozy’s third wife, has already spoken to him in prison, via a cell landline, lawyers for Sarkozy confirmed, saying his first night was “frightening”.
One of them, Jean-Michel Darrois, explained: “I saw him in the visiting room, we stayed together for a long time.
“He is the man everyone knows – strong, dynamic, a fighter. He has brought two books to read: The Count of Monte Cristo (the novel by Alexandre Dumas) about revenge, and The Life of Jesus Christ, about the resurrection.”
The video posted online refers to Sarkozy, and also to Ziad Takieddine, a former Lebanese arms dealer who died in mysteriously circumstances earlier this year while on the run from accusations that he was the middle man between Gaddafi and Sarkozy.
