French authorities have removed the electronic tag former president Nicolas Sarkozy was ordered to wear following his conviction for graft, Paris prosecutors said on Thursday, May 15. Sarkozy was fitted with the tag in February instead of going to jail to serve a one-year sentence for corruption, a first for a former French head of state. But given his age, the 70-year-old could apply for early parole, which was granted Wednesday after serving just over three months, the prosecutor's office told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
France's highest appeals court in December 2024 ordered Sarkozy to wear the tag for a year after finding him guilty of illegal attempts to secure favors from a judge. Sarkozy, who has been beset by legal problems since leaving office in 2012 following a bruising presidential election defeat, said he is innocent and is taking the case to the European Court of Human Rights.
The tag's removal comes with conditions, the prosecutor's office said, including the obligation to report any travel abroad, comply with summonses and receive visits from probation officers. "I can confirm that Nicolas Sarkozy was granted conditional release on May 14," his lawyer Jacqueline Laffont-Haik told AFP. A French court will rule in September in a trial on separate charges that Sarkozy accepted illegal campaign financing from the late Libyan dictator Moamer Kadhafi.