By NICOLAS VAUX-MONTAGNY and SYLVIE CORBET, Associated Press

PARIS (AP) — France’s former President Nicolas Sarkozy was freed from prison Monday after a Paris appeals court granted him release under judicial supervision , less than three weeks after he began serving a five-year sentence for criminal conspiracy in a scheme to finance his 2007 election campaign with funds from Libya.

Sarkozy, 70, left La Santé prison by car and later quickly stepped into his home in western Paris. The brief scene was in contrast to his very public incarceration 20 days earlier, when he walked down the alley near his house hand-in-hand with his wife and former supermodel Carla Bruni-Sarkozy as he waved to supporters.

The former president, who denies wrongdoing, is banned from leaving the French terri

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