A Frenchwoman who stood as a far-Right National Front candidate was today (thurs) given a suspended prison sentence for staging her own abduction so she could secretly visit a politician lover.
Sandy Gaillard, 25, concocted the bizarre plan while involved in a ‘menage a trois’ with three men, including the so far unidentified public figure.
The Correctional Court in the southern town of Mende heard how Gaillard was recently separated from her husband and seeing two boyfriends when she concocted the story on July 22nd.
Sandy Gaillard, 25, concocted the bizarre plan while involved in a ‘menage a trois’ with three men, including the so far unidentified public figure (stock image)
According to prosecution evidence she ‘sent a text message to one lover, saying she had been kidnapped and tied up in the boot of a black BMW’.
The local police were immediately informed, and they scrambled a helicopter and 50 officers to search for Gaillard close to her home village of Saint-Chely-D’apcher.
The overnight operation cost the equivalent of at least £100,000, and meant other emergencies could not be dealt with.
Gaillard simply returned home to her live-in lover the next day, saying her kidnappers had ‘let me go’, but police arrested her following a long interrogation because her ‘facts’ did not add up.
‘I’m completely overwhelmed by these events, I’m sorry I lied,’ Gaillard told the court, after admitting she had been in bed with her second lover all along.
Gaillard, who stood in local elections for Marine Le Pen’s National Front in the Lozere department in 2015, was sentenced to six months in prison suspended for two years, after admitting to a charge of ‘false witness’.
She was also ordered to seek psychological help, and fined the equivalent of £4500.
The National Front caused a sensation across France earlier this year when Ms Le Pen, came runner-up in the presidential election to Emmanuel Macron.
Despite this, the party only managed to win eight out of 577 seats in the Paris National Assembly.