A court on Thursday sentenced former French president Nicolas Sarkozy to five years in prison over a scheme for the late Libyan dictator Moamer Kadhafi to fund his 2007 presidential run, a verdict that will make the rightwinger the first French postwar leader to serve jail time.

The Paris criminal court convicted Sarkozy, 70 and president from 2007-2012, on charges of criminal conspiracy, although it acquitted him of corruption and personally accepting illegal campaign financing.

The court ordered that Sarkozy should be placed in custody at a later date, with prosecutors to inform the former head of state on October 13 when he should go to prison.

He was also fined 100,000 euros ($117,000) and banned from holding public office. He has been convicted already in two separate trials but al

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