Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy has arrived at La Santé prison in Paris on Tuesday to start a five-year prison term, Reuters reports.

Sarkozy, who was the conservative president of France between 2007 and 2012, was handed a five-year jail term in September for criminal conspiracy over a plan for late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi to fund his electoral campaign.

He walked out of his home hand-in-hand with his singer wife, Carla Bruni, and left in a car escorted by police on motorbikes.

The ex-president was reported by the Associated Press (AP) as saying “an innocent man is being locked up” while on his way to prison.