Anti-terrorist investigation opened after FLNC commando unit burst into separatist rally

Three hooded and armed men claiming to be from the Corsican National Liberation Front burst into a gathering in Corte.

Three hooded and armed men presenting themselves as members of the clandestine movement Front de libération nationale de la Corse (FLNC) burst into an international gathering of autonomists and independence activists on Sunday 4 August. They declared that the extreme right “stay” for them “the enemy of the people”.

During this big annual gathering of the independence supporters in Corte (Haute-Corse), called the “Ghjurnate Internaziunale di Corti”, in which Kanak representatives from New Caledonia participated, the FLNC men spoke just after the speech by Petr’Anto Tomasi, spokesperson for the new Corsican independence party Nazione.

One of them read a four-page text, his voice masked by an audio system, returning in particular to recent political events and the historically high score of the National Rally in the last legislative elections.

“In our country, today as yesterday, the extreme right, whether it is French or whether it drapes itself in the flag with the Moor’s head [le drapeau corse]remains a gangrene for the Corsican people”he declaimed. They refer in particular to the creation, in March 2024, of the Mossa Palatinu party, a Corsican political movement presenting itself as autonomist, which intends to fight against the “Jacobinism, Wokism and Islamism”.

The National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office (Pnat) confirmed on Monday that it had opened an investigation into terrorist criminal association. The investigations were entrusted to the anti-terrorist sub-directorate of the judicial police (SDAT, coordinating service), to the inter-regional directorates of the national police in Bastia and Ajaccio, and to the research section of the Corsican gendarmerie, the anti-terrorist public prosecutor’s office said.