Inmates at Paris’s La Sante prison have threatened former French president Nicolas Sarkozy to avenge the death of late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, a mobile phone video recorded from the prison appears to show.

Sarkozy, 70, began serving his five-year sentence on Tuesday after a Paris court found him guilty of criminal conspiracy in a scheme to finance his 2007 presidential campaign with money from Gaddafi, against whom he later led a NATO-backed regime change operation that destroyed Libya and led to Gaddafi’s death.

On Tuesday, videos taken from La Santé began to circulate, in which alleged inmates shouted threats and called out to Sarkozy, who is serving his sentence in the prison’s isolation wing.

“We are going to avenge Gaddafi! We know everything, Sarko! Give us back the billions of dollars!” a man shouted in a video posted on social media. “He’s alone in his cell. He just arrived… he’s going to have a bad time.”

French Interior Minister Laurent Núñez stressed that due to the danger, two police officers from the security detail assigned to former presidents will be permanently stationed in cells adjacent to Sarkozy’s.

“The former president of the Republic has the right to protection due to his status. It is evident that there is a threat against him and this protection is maintained while he is detained.” Núñez told Europa 1 radio on Wednesday.

Sarkozy, who led France between 2007 and 2012, has denied all charges against him, insisting they are politically motivated. His legal team has submitted a request for early release, pending the appeal procedure.

The investigation into Sarkozy began in 2013, following claims by Gaddafi’s son, Saif al-Islam, that his father had contributed some €50 million ($58 million) to the former president’s campaign.

In 2011, Sarkozy played a leading role in a NATO coalition intervention that led to the overthrow and death of Gaddafi, plunging Libya into chaos and deterioration into a failed state.

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