Yvan Colonna, 61, died on Monday March 21, after long days of coma, following the attack by a fellow prisoner in Arles. The man was sentenced to life imprisonment for the assassination of the prefect Erignac in February 1998. A look back at the life of the nationalist activist.
July 4, 2003. Nicolas Sarkozy, then Minister of the Interior, is at a meeting in Carpentras. From the top of the rostrum, to the applause of the room, he launches: “The French police have just arrested Yvan Colonna, the assassin of the prefect Erignac.“A few hours earlier, a Raid unit found the Cargesien in an isolated sheepfold in Porto Pollo.
Yvan Colonna has been wanted by the police since May 22, 1999, when he went underground. The day before, four men were questioned by investigators in Paris on the assassination of the prefect Claude Erignac which occurred 16 months earlier in Ajaccio. They confess, recognize a participation, and designate a shooter: Yvan Colonna. The 39-year-old man, a shepherd in Cargèse, immediately becomes the most wanted man in France.
Militant commitment
Born in April 1960 in Ajaccio, Yvan Colonna spent part of his adolescence in Nice. After obtaining his baccalaureate, he began studying to become a physical education and sports teacher, like his father Jean-Hugues. But in 1981, at the age of 21, he abandoned the benches of the faculty and returned to Corsica. The same year, Jean-Hugues Colonna was elected socialist deputy for the Alpes-Maritimes, before entering the Ministry of the Interior as an adviser.
On the island, young Yvan Colonna settled in the family village of Cargèse in Corse-du-Sud. He does odd jobs there before settling down as a goatherd. On the political side, he joined the Corsican Teachers’ Union in 1982. A year later, he stood in the municipal elections of Cargèse under the nationalist label and then became a member of A Cuncolta Naziunalista, the public organization of the front of National Liberation of Corsica (FLNC).
After the break-up of the nationalist family in 1990, Yvan Colonna joined the ranks of the FLNC canal historique before breaking away from A Cuncolta, his legal showcase, in 1993 following the assassination of an activist by other nationalists who had become Brothers in arms. Between 1995 and until he was implicated in the assassination of the prefect Erignac, no one heard of Yvan Colonna. For the policemen, the man “lined up“, “has hung up” and divides his time between his work as a shepherd and the Cargèse football team he coaches. The nationalist activist is the father of two children.
Three Trials
Yvan Colonna’s first trial was held between November 12 and December 12, 2007, four years after his arrest. Judged by professional magistrates in the context of a special assize court in Paris, he appeared for “assassination in connection with a terrorist enterprise” and “association of criminals in connection with a terrorist enterprise“.
After a month of debate, he was sentenced to life imprisonment. One of his lawyers, Maître Antoine Sollacaro, murdered in 2012, evokes a “miscarriage of justice” and affirms that “the file is absolutely void of evidence“. He announces to appeal. This sentence will be confirmed by two other trials, one in 2009, canceled by the Court of Cassation for procedural defect, and the other in 2011 where Yvan Colonna is sentenced to life imprisonment. The shepherd has always maintained his innocence.
The defense of Yvan Colonna forms a final appeal in Cassation. It will be rejected in July 2012. A decision which will condemn it definitively, and will close the way to any recourse in France. A year later, his lawyers seized the European Court of Human Rights considering that their client did not have the right to a fair trial.
Incarcerated since 2012 at the central house in Arles, Yvan Colonna had been registered in the register of particularly reported detainees (DPS) since his first conviction. Because of this status, the nationalist activist was subject to special surveillance and specific prison conditions. He also prevented him from any rapprochement in an island prison. A rapprochement that he had been asking for for many years.
The sexagenarian had served more than 18 years in detention. He could, like the last two members of the “Erignac commando”, claim a reduced sentence.