Paris: France’s former President Nicolas Sarkozy was freed from prison on 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 - keen to avoid cameras. The brief scene was in stark 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 territory and from being in touch with key p

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