PARIS — A court in Paris on Thursday found Nicolas Sarkozy, former president of France, guilty of a criminal conspiracy to seek funding for his 2007 campaign from the government of onetime Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi.

The court sentenced Sarkozy, a conservative politician who led France from 2007-12, to five years in prison and ruled that the incarceration would be enforced in the coming weeks regardless of an appeal — a harsh sentence that is unprecedented in modern French history for a former president.

“If they absolutely want me to sleep in prison, I will sleep in prison, but with my head high,” Sarkozy told reporters at the courthouse.

It was not his first conviction, nor even his first prison sentence — since leaving office. He has already been found guilty of corruption, inf

See Full Page