PARIS, October 21. /TASS/. Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy will likely be released from prison before Christmas, his lawyer Jean-Michel Darrois said on the air of the BFMTV channel.

Darrois said the request for release was filed immediately after Sarkozy's imprisonment to "release him as soon as possible. This is a sad day for him, for our institutions and for France. His imprisonment is a disgrace."

Earlier on Tuesday, Sarkozy, who served as president of France from 2007 to 2012, was placed in the Sante prison in Paris to serve a five-year sentence in a case of Libya’s financing of the 2007 election campaign. On September 25, he was found guilty of complicity in a criminal group in the case of Libyan financing, but acquitted on charges of concealing embezzlement of public funds and passive corruption. However, the court did not establish the fact of illegal financing of the 2007 election campaign.

In May 2012, eight days before the second round of the French presidential election, Mediapart reported that Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi had allocated 50 million euros to Sarkozy for election expenses. As proof, it published on its website a resolution signed by the Secretary of the General People's Committee for Foreign Relations and International Cooperation of Libya. The Paris court ruled that the document was fake.