PARIS, Oct 22, 2025 (BSS/AFP) - France's interior minister on Wednesday 
confirmed two security officers would be ensuring Nicolas Sarkozy's 
protection while he serves jail time in a criminal conspiracy case involving 
Libya.

The former head of state would usually benefit from "a protection arrangement 
given his status and the threats against him", an arrangement that "has 
indeed been maintained in detention", Interior Minister Laurent Nunez told 
local media, confirming what sources had earlier told AFP.

Two security officers are stationed in a neighbouring cell in La Sante prison 
in Paris, where Sarkozy was incarcerated on Tuesday, the sources said.

The right-wing leader from 2007 to 2012 was found guilty last month of 
seeking to acquire funding for the campaign that saw him elected from Moamer 
Kadhafi's Libya.

He was handed a five-year prison term for criminal conspiracy.

Sarkozy's legal team has requested his release pending his appeal trial, but 
says he is expected to remain in jail for at least "three weeks to a month".

A prison warden representative on Wednesday called the bodyguards' presence 
an insult to his profession.

"They're basically telling us we don't know how to do our jobs," Wilfried 
Fonck, the head of the UFAP UNSa Justice union, told RTL radio.

"Today we have two civilians inside a prison who shouldn't be there," and who 
don't know how the system works, he said. "I've never seen anything like it 
in 25 years on the job."

Sarkozy was expected to be held in a nine square metre (95 square foot) cell 
in the prison's solitary confinement wing to avoid contact with other 
prisoners, prison staff told AFP.

In solitary confinement, prisoners are allowed out of their cells for one 
walk a day, alone, in a small yard. Sarkozy will also be allowed visits three 
times a week.

Sarkozy is the first former head of a European Union state to be jailed, and 
the first French leader to be incarcerated since Philippe Petain, the Nazi 
collaborationist head of state who was jailed after World War II.

He has faced a flurry of legal woes since losing his re-election bid in 2012, 
having already been convicted in two other cases.