PARIS - France's ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy became the first former head of an EU state to be jailed, proclaiming his innocence as he entered a Paris prison.
France's right-wing leader from 2007 to 2012 was found guilty last month of seeking to acquire funding from Moamer Kadhafi's Libya for the campaign that saw him elected.
AFP journalists saw the 70-year-old -- who has appealed the verdict -- leave his home, and after a short drive flanked by police on motorbikes, enter the La Sante prison in the French capital.
In a defiant message posted on social media as he was being transferred, Sarkozy denied any wrongdoing.
"It is not a former president of the republic being jailed this morning, but an innocent man," he said on X.
"I have no doubt. The truth will prevail."
Sarkozy was handed a five-year jail term in September for criminal conspiracy over a plan for late Libyan dictator Kadhafi to fund his electoral campaign.
After his September 25 verdict, Sarkozy had said he would "sleep in prison -- but with my head held high".
Sarkozy will be the first French leader to be incarcerated since Philippe Petain, the Nazi collaborationist head of state who was jailed after World War II.
He has told Le Figaro newspaper he will be taking with him a biography of Jesus and a copy of "The Count of Monte Cristo", a novel in which an innocent man is sentenced to jail but escapes to take revenge.
Sarkozy is likely to be held in a nine-square-metre cell in the prison's solitary confinement wing, prison staff told AFP.
It is unclear how long Sarkozy will remain in jail.
Presiding judge Nathalie Gavarino said during sentencing that the offences were of "exceptional gravity", and therefore ordered Sarkozy to be jailed even if he filed an appeal.
But Sarkozy's lawyers are expected to request his release immediately, and the appeals court will then have two months to examine it.