French ex-president Sarkozy begins jail sentence

Your confounding how things should be with how they are. These are two distinct philosophies, only one of which is relevant in most of the real world, unfortunately.

They're cold enough there

And he could also take this opportunity to clean the cells using his much loved Karcher!

Article 3 ECHR should prevent the prison authorities from putting any prisoner in a position where they know he's going to "get roughed up". You and I both want that right for ourselves, so surely we should also extend it to Sarzoky?

He is a former boss of french police. It is not possible to throw him in one of these overcrowded prisons.

The wine pairings are particularly unimpressive.

Great video about the lack of local rivalries in French football:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DadkD_06mM

The cell is the same but he is alone in it, most convicts have a cellmate

I don't know, but what I do know that "jail" has a very different meaning for me.

In Argentina the lives of people of an entire country have been ruined because of the last 20 years of robbery from the state arcs.

Yet every disgusting politician is out there or has served a laughable sentence. And what do you get in turn after ripping off a country? A home prision benefit.

It's way more complicated than this.

First, this is mostly about things that happened before his election.

The tribunal ruled he did not personally benefit, and he did not directly solicit money to finance his campaign either.

However, some of his closest allies (who would become his ministers later) did the latter. The tribunal could not find any direct proof he was involved but ruled there were enough "converging indications" that he knew and did nothing to stop it.

Not just from Libya, he met & received money from the brother in law of the Libyan dictator Muhamar Kadhaffi

The brother in law personally orchestrated the crashe of a civilian airliner, killing 170 passengers

Not only this, but he plotted to whitewash the terrorist responsible for a terror attack on a plane which killed more French people than the terror attacks of the Bataclan... this guy is despicable and merits to be behind bars

And it's the second sentence for a illegal financing of his presidential campaign.

Formal proofs of this illegal financing have been linked to two of his closest collaborators but not him directly. He is so convicted for "association de malfaiteurs" wich mean "partnership with criminals / wrongdoers".

The illegal financing also explains what the US call the "Sarkozy war", which what a very odd move from France.

Note that, despite the formal proofs of the wrong doing, Sarkozy has the support of most major medias AND from the current president Macron which is not exactly the same party as Sarkozy (but close enough). That suggests politically motivated prosecution is very unlikely.

The "Red judge myth"is, well, a myth. And Fillon's case was very clear and he had all the reason to be prosecuted.

> But it is also clear that judges (who are notable left-leaning, if not far-left) are much more efficient at prosecuting right-wing figures (Fillon, for 0 reason this time).

This blend of comments strike me as odd. Are you actually complaining that a judicial system is too efficient at catching corruption at high levels? Is this bad? What point are you trying to make, exactly?

> Even if indeed guilty, things like jailing him "provisionally" despite his appeal are discretionary decisions of the court so also open to all interpretations depiste the very black and white comments here...

I read it the other way around. You're arguing for preferencial treatment on the ground that any inconvenience could be misconstrued as politically motivated.

In the meantime you're seeing a case involving organized crime, lieutenants caught red-handed, and charges extended to the leader of the criminal enterprise. You're not seeing any doubt being raised on the charges, only on whether the politician could have political opponents.

> Difficult to say.

It really is not. Nobody is benefitting from this politically, and the facts are difficult to ignore.

> jailing him "provisionally" despite his appeal are discretionary decisions of the court so also open to all interpretations depiste the very black and white comments her

It’s just how it’s done in cases like this, and he can thank himself for having normalised it.

Not difficult at all. Tens to hundreds of judges had a say on his case over the many years he's been on trial. What are the chances he only got left-wing judges?

This muddying of the water is exactly how you get to Trumpism and a blatant shamelessness of politicians in the face obvious corruption.

> If he'd got the same funding from the Obama regime, surely he would never have gone to prison.

Speaking as someone who isn't french,

If Sarkozy received the same funding from Obama it would have beem extremely shady.

From Gaddafi it sounds outright treacherous.

This is France, getting money from Obama would likely have been worse.

Wow, calling the Obama administration a regime seems like... a dog whistle?

I mean, I don't think we need to put air quotes around "terrorist" for Gaddafi. This was a ruler who was happy to bring down Western passenger jets and put bombs in night clubs.

Thinking about this some more, I'd like to offer an even more controversial opinion, being a proposal for a governance structure that I think would have entirely different failure modes:

How about it if by a fuller acceptance that power corrupts, we have the head of government only serve for one term and automatically be taken to (actual) prison once their time is done. They would then have an expedited trial by a socioeconomically diverse jury representing the population, judge their overreach in different areas, and how long of a sentence they should be given; at best, they would be released after a month or two for time served. Afterwards, unless this has been explicitly revoked from them due to gross misconduct, the former head of government would be given a sufficiently generous stipend to live and travel without ever needing to work again, and encouraged to spend the rest of their lives on charitable pursuits.

The big risk I see here is that by stripping some of the long-term power from the head of government, it would lead to a re-concentration of powers in a head of party role, or other behind-the-scenes power brokers, but the intent here is that the head of government once elected is explicitly given the ability to overreach, and particularly knowing that they'll be set for life, they'll have the freedom to act independently, in what hopefully would be their take on the country's best interests, and a desire to leave a positive legacy. And furthermore, I think that restricting the ascension to power to those who are willing to take on that prison time would attract people who are a bit less vain than the typical crop of candidates, and at the same time reduce the stigma of prison in general, and hopefully lead to political interest in improving prison conditions.

I'm not into politics and I'm far from an expert but this has more to it. Netanyahu doesn't just wait until he loses his grip on the rein, he's making the changes to the system (i.e ruin the whole country for everyone) so he won't count as a criminal when this is all over.

No offense but the french people should thank god their criminal in control didn't go all the way through turning the country into a shit show in the process.

As I said before I believe we live in a global time in which countries must embrace the rule of law systematically in order to survive as democracies. Otherwise you just get a kleptocracy with extra steps, just like in the US, some of Europe and Russia.

more like third of them are, third of them are not and a third doesn't care

> It needs to be noted that it's not the norm in France either.

85% of prison sentences of more than two years also carry “exécution provisoire”: https://www.justice.gouv.fr/sites/default/files/migrations/p... (page 2). Sentences of more than 2 years are not the norm though.

> He will most likely ask the courts to review the execution of the sentence until the appeal in the next few days.

He already did.

Sarkozy was convicted for "association de malfaiteurs" (criminal conspiracy) related to allowing associates to meet with Libyan officials to discuss covert campaign financing for his 2007 election. Remarkably, while convicted of conspiracy, he was acquitted on the actual underlying charges.

The tribunal acknowledged no direct evidence linked Sarkozy to receiving or handling the funds and that the disputed flows weren't established as having served his campaign. Yet the conviction rested on a "bundle of concordant indices" rather than established facts.

The irony: Sarkozy spent his political career advocating for tougher criminal laws and harsher punishments. The "association de malfaiteurs" law was reintroduced in 1986, and he championed its application throughout his tenure. Now he's imprisoned under the very provision he helped expand—convicted on evidence of intent to prepare a crime rather than proof of an actual crime, exactly the kind of broad prosecutorial power he once argued was necessary.

He got bitten by his own sword.

It's not a nickname. It's simply because the prison is located on Rue de la Santé (Health Street). Rue de la Santé was named that way because there was a hospital there from the 17th to the 19th century.