A court in Paris issued a guilty verdict on some charges on Thursday in the corruption trial of France's ex-President Nicolas Sarkozy. He was sentenced to five years in prison. 

The court found Sarkozy guilty of criminal conspiracy but cleared him of passive corruption and other illegal financing charges.

"For the court, the material elements have not been established that a corruption offence has been committed," Judge Nathalie Gavarino said. 

Sarkozy, who was in office from 2007 to 2012, was accused of accepting campaign contributions from the late Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi via Franco-Lebanese businessman Ziad Takieddine.

Takieddine, the key accuser in the case, died on Tuesday in Beirut. He claimed he passed Sarkozy's chief of staff a total of €5 million ($6 million) in cash between 2006 and 2007.

He alleged that in return, Sarkozy was supposed to help rehabilitate Gadhafi's image abroad at a time when few wanted to deal with the Libyan dictator, widely seen as the orchestrator of the 1988 Lockerbie airplane bombing. Gadhafi was killed by opponents in 2011 amid the unrest of the Arab Spring and a NATO intervention in Libya.

Sarkozy's wife, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, stands accused with her husband of pressuring witnesses to stay silent.

Sarkozy said he will appeal the verdict, which suspends the sentence pending the outcome of the appeal. The former French president said the verdict was an "injustice" and a "scandal."

"If they absolutely want me to sleep in jail, I will sleep in jail, but with my head held high," Sarkozy told reporters after the ruling.

Twists and turns in Sarkozy case

The case then went through a series of twists and turns as Takieddine retracted his accusation, then retracted his retraction.

Accused alongside the Sarkozys are 11 other co-defendants. These include Sarkozy's former chief aide, Claude Gueant; chief of campaign financing, Eric Woerth; and former minister Brice Hortefeux. All the defendants deny the charges.

The prosecution's case is based on the testimony of several former Libyan dignitaries, as well as trips to Libya taken by Gueant and Hortefeux, and notes belonging to former Libyan Oil Minister Shukri Ghanem, who was found dead in Vienna in 2012.

This is the latest in a series of corruption cases against the former French president, who has been found guilty twice and stripped of the country's highest award, the Legion of Honor.

Edited by Sean Sinico