Supporters of former French president Nicolas Sarkozy thronged the streets outside his Paris home on Tuesday, hours before he was due to begin serving a prison sentence for his role in an illicit Libyan campaign finance scheme.

Sarkozy, who led France from 2007 to 2012, is the first former head of state from a European Union nation to face jail time. The 70-year-old conservative was sentenced in September to five years in prison for criminal conspiracy linked to efforts to secure funds from the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi for his 2007 presidential bid.

Despite his ongoing appeal, the onetime leader—long one of France’s most polarising figures—has insisted he will face the ordeal “with dignity.”
“If they absolutely want me to sleep in prison, I will sleep in prison—but with my head held high,” Sarkozy declared following the court’s September 25 verdict.

Read also: Ex-French Leader Sarkozy Sentenced In Libya Fund Case

On Tuesday morning, chants of La Marseillaise echoed through the quiet neighbourhood as dozens of loyalists gathered with framed portraits of the ex-president. “This is a sad day for France—and for democracy,” said Flora Amanou, a longtime supporter who described the trial as “a political witch hunt.”

Sarkozy will be held at Paris’s La Santé prison, marking the first incarceration of a French leader since Marshal Philippe Pétain, the wartime collaborator who was jailed after World War II.

The former president, who has maintained his innocence, told Le Figaro that he planned to take two books into confinement: a biography of Jesus and The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas’ classic tale of betrayal, imprisonment, and revenge.

Once a symbol of French conservatism and ambition, Sarkozy’s downfall has now entered the history books—turning a onetime powerhouse of the Fifth Republic into its most famous inmate.

— Africa Today News, New York