Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s book about his 20 days behind bars, titled “A Prisoner’s Diary” (“Le journal d’un prisonnier” in French), hit shelves today.
The 216-page long prison memoir (that’s about 11 pages per day of incarceration) describes La Santé prison – where he was incarcerated for criminal association in financing his 2007 campaign with funds from Libya – as a noisy, harsh “all-grey” world of “inhuman violence”.
It’s worth reminding that Sarkozy was held in solitary confinement and kept strictly away from other inmates for security reasons.
Sarkozy writes that his cell looked like a “low-end hotel, except for the armored door and the bars,” with a hard mattress, a plastic-like pillow and a shower that produced only a thin stream of water.
“The worst part was that this thin stream of water stopped very quickly, like a timer. You constantly had to find the button and press it.”
Clearly Sarkozy never experienced the joys of public gym or swimming pool showers.
Opening the window on his first day behind bars, he heard an inmate who “was relentlessly striking the bars of his cell with a metal object.”
“The atmosphere was threatening. Welcome to hell!”
“The most inhumane violence was the daily reality of this place,” he continues, raising questions about the prison system’s ability to reintegrate people once their sentences are served.
Sarkozy confirms that he declined the meals served in small plastic trays along with a “mushy, soggy baguette” – their smell, he wrote, made him nauseous. Instead, he ate “dairy products, cereal bars, mineral water, apple juice and a few sweet treats.” He was allowed one hour a day in a small gym room, where he mostly used a basic treadmill.
Throughout the book, Sarkozy describes his daily routine (“Wake up early. Make the bed immediately. Wash, shave, dress properly. No pajamas, no negligence”) and paints the picture of a man who has greatly suffered – and who wishes the reader to empathise with his many woe-is-me “revelations”.
SOURCE: EURONEWS
