A Paris appeals court will decide today whether former French president Nicolas Sarkozy, who is serving a five-year sentence in connection with the Libya affair, can be released from prison, DPA reported, quoted by BTA.
After being sentenced to five years in prison, Sarkozy was detained three weeks ago on a court order to temporarily enforce his sentence, although he appealed it.
The lawyers for the 70-year-old Sarkozy immediately filed a request for his release, and the court is expected to rule on it this morning.
The Libya affair is based on allegations that Sarkozy received illegal funds from the regime of then-Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2007 to finance his presidential campaign.
The Paris Criminal Court found no direct evidence for this accusation, but indicated in its conclusions that Sarkozy and his close associates had tried to obtain funds from the regime. Thus, the court accused Sarkozy of participating in a criminal organization.
In the modern history of France, no former president has received such a severe sentence. Sarkozy, for his part, has consistently insisted that he is innocent.
Last week, Bulgarian President Rumen Radev called for Sarkozy's release. He did so at the ceremony where he awarded the President's Badge of Honor to the British Ambassador to Libya in the period 2002-2006, Anthony Leyden, for his exceptional services to Bulgaria, demonstrated through personal commitment and professional contribution to the release of the Bulgarian nurses.
Let me use this solemn moment to give another recognition for the remarkable empathy of a French politician - at that time President of France - who, together with his wife, made enormous efforts for the release of our medics, said Radev. Today he is in prison and needs our support and empathy with which to express our true gratitude. Therefore, I support the declarations of Presidents Petar Stoyanov and Georgi Parvanov, of former ministers, politicians and public figures who have accepted the cause of his release as their duty, and I also appeal to European politicians and public figures - for the release of President Sarkozy, the head of state said.
The Bulgarian medics were arrested in Benghazi on February 9, 1999 and spent a total of 2,755 days in prisons in Libya. Bulgarian nurses Kristiana Valcheva, Nasya Nenova, Valentina Siropulo, Valya Chervenyashka, Snezhana Dimitrova, the Palestinian doctor Ashraf al-Hajjuj, who by then already had Bulgarian citizenship, and Dr. Zdravko Georgiev, returned to Bulgaria on July 24, 2007. On July 24, 2007, the medics departed for Sofia on a French government plane, accompanied by the wife of French President Nicolas Sarkozy - Cecilia Sarkozy, and the European Commissioner for External Relations and European Neighborhood Policy Benita Ferrero-Waldner.