Published by Global Banking and Finance Review
Posted on October 22, 2025
2 min readLast updated: January 21, 2026
Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy faces death threats from a La Sante prison inmate, prompting an investigation. Security measures have been heightened.
PARIS (Reuters) -Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy was targeted by death threats from an inmate at Paris's La Sante prison, where he began serving his sentence this week, prompting a probe, the Paris prosecutor's office said on Wednesday.
“On October 22, 2025, the Paris prosecutor's office was informed by the director of La Sante prison of a video circulating on social media, clearly filmed by an inmate, in which he made threats upon Nicolas Sarkozy’s arrival at the facility,” the prosecutor’s office said in an emailed statement to Reuters.
Three inmates were questioned as part of the investigation, and two mobile phones were seized during a search of the prison, it added.
Sarkozy, who led France from 2007 to 2012, on Tuesday began serving a five-year sentence after being convicted of conspiring to raise campaign funds from Libya. The former president has been assigned two armed police officers for protection during his incarceration, a measure that has sparked complaints from prison guard unions.
(Reporting by Benoit Van Overstraeten and Mathieu Rosemain; Editing by Bill Berkrot)
A former president is an individual who has previously held the office of president in a country and is no longer in that position.
A death threat is a communication that expresses an intention to kill or cause serious harm to someone, often used to intimidate or instill fear.
A prison inmate is a person who is confined in a prison as a result of being convicted of a crime and serving a sentence.
A conviction is a formal declaration by a legal authority that someone is guilty of a crime, typically resulting in a penalty or sentence.
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