Nicolas Sarkozy behind bars: Is jail time justified for former French president?
Description
Sometimes former presidents do go to jail. Nicolas Sarkozy has begun his five-year sentence over the illicit financing of his 2007 presidential campaign by Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya. Is this proof that justice is truly blind? Or, as his supporters contend, are we seeing revenge by magistrates who were often maligned by the 70-year-old conservative when he was in power? France is split on that debate.
Meanwhile, Emmanuel Macron welcomed Sarkozy to the presidential palace last week ahead of his incarceration and his justice minister says he'll go visit the former leader at Paris's La Santé prison. So does jailing a former head of state really erode faith in institutions, which are already put to the test with the current showdown between a lame-duck president and a splintered parliament?
Or should it be about the facts of the case, the dealings with Gaddafi and his head of intelligence Abdullah Senussi, seen as the mastermind of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing and the 1989 downing of a French passenger plane over Niger? That all depends on which echo chamber you live in.
Produced by François Picard, Rebecca Gnignati, Ilayda Habip and Jean-Vincent Russo
United States
