Did the prison administration err in the case of the fatal attack on Yvan Colonna in prison? The director of the central house of Arles (Bouches-du-Rhône) and the former director are heard on this subject on Wednesday March 30, at 10 a.m., by the law commission of the National Assembly. The instance had been seized after a radicalized prisoner, Franck Elong Abé, attacked the Corsican nationalist in the sports hall of the central house of Arles where he was serving a life sentence for the assassination of the prefect Erignac. Franceinfo was able to consult several elements of the file as part of the investigation opened by the national anti-terrorism prosecution.
First question raised by the investigators: why did no one see the attack which was taking place this Wednesday, March 2? There were two CCTV cameras in this gym. Yet neither of the two officers tasked with viewing the footage saw the assault in progress, according to the report.
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The director of the central house of Arles offers several explanations. Of the more than 280 cameras installed throughout the prison alone, some appeared on the monitors’ screens but not the sports hall. The other explanation lies in a maintenance operation, which took place that day. And this work required, according to the director, to disconnect all the screens for a few minutes.
Regarding the physical presence of supervisors on the ground, there too no one saw anything. Two supervisors were however making rounds in the area but not specifically around the sports hall, between 10:10 a.m. and 10:25 a.m. at the time of the attack. Yvan Colonna and his attacker were therefore alone in the room, door closed, according to the first elements of the investigation.
Before the deputies of the law commission, the director of the prison administration had however affirmed the opposite. The closed door could explain why the supervisors took so long to intervene. Except that other detainees, present in the room next door, of course heard the cries of Yvan Colonna. One of them tells the investigators that he took it for “crazy cries, as there are often in prison”, he said. So he didn’t give the alert.
Yvan Colonna and his attacker were alone. However, they were both detainees particularly reported, the status of “DPS. But Franck Elong Abé, the aggressor of Yvan Colonna, was what is called an “auxi”, that is to say a detainee authorized to work in the prison and who can therefore move more freely.Given his profile as a “veteran” of the jihad in Afghanistan and his chaotic prison career – he had notably taken a nurse hostage at the Sequedin prison (North) -, the fact that he obtained this status obviously raises questions.
Since his arrival in Arles, Franck Elong Abé had displayed “appropriate behavior”, assures the management of the prison. Until this attack, justified according to the detainee, by a blasphemy by Yvan Colonna, the two detainees had cordial relations. They even played chess and played sports together. According to the prison management, no information could therefore suggest the occurrence of such an act.