France’s former president Sarkozy will begin serving a 5-year prison sentence Tuesday

9-square-meter cells

The National Financial Prosecutor’s office told Sarkozy the specifics of his detention last Monday, but details have not been made public. Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin confirmed that Sarkozy will enter La Santé on Tuesday and that he’ll personally visit him to make sure security conditions are met.

In the so-called VIP section, Sarkozy could have his own room in one of 18 identical 98-square-foot cells in a wing separated from other general prison inmates.

Botton, who says he has known Sarkozy for decades, expressed doubt that the former president will be accorded many special privileges in prison. “Even if you are president of the Republic, even if you are a very rich man, you decide nothing.”

Based on his own experience inside La Santé, about which he wrote the book “QB4,″ Botton described what Sarkozy might expect. After being processed, convicts are handed personal kit by the guards and then led to their cells.

“They will open the cell, and (Sarkozy) will discover where he will go,” he said. Botton described the cell he’d lived in La Santé: “A small 70-centimeter (2 feet 4 inches) bed fixed to the floor, a hot plate, a pay refrigerator, a pay TV.”

He said that inmates’ rooms in the VIP section were equipped with fixed landline phones they can use to make calls, which are recorded by prison authorities, but they cannot receive calls on the same line.

The shock of incarceration

Patrick Balkany, a longtime friend of Sarkozy who spent five months in La Santé for tax evasion in 2019-2020, described the first hours of newly admitted inmates.

“They’re going to take his photo, to make him a card because over there we’re a number, we’re no longer a person with a name,” he told RTL radio.

Then, “if he’s considered like any other inmate, he undresses and his clothes are searched to make sure he doesn’t have any prohibited items on him,” Balkany said.

“The hardest part is when you arrive in your cell, it’s a shock,” he added.

Botton, also, recalled the shock he experienced when his affluent life crumbled when he was sent to prison the first time. “I went for my first time from my 1,200 square meter mansion to 9 square meters,’’ he said.

From having a private staff of 11 people outside prison, he found himself cleaning a filthy cell when he arrived, he said. “That’s what we call the shock of incarceration.’’

“When you are at 7 p.m., you are in jail, alone, and you heard that everything is locked, you are alone,” Botton says. “Everything is finished. The game is finished.”