Corsica in mourning, rallies throughout the country

On the forecourt of the cathedral of Ajaccio (Corse-du-Sud), nearly 300 people are gathered, on the evening of Tuesday March 22, after the death of Yvan Colonna. “I think it’s a duty for all Corsica to be there. Beyond the circumstances, just bow to the memory of Yvan Colonna. I’m not here to make him a martyr, I’m coming to cry a father of a family, a grandfather, a man”, argues a man. The Corsican nationalist died Monday, March 21, at the age of 61, in a Marseille hospital. He had been transferred there urgently at the beginning of the month, after a violent attack at the prison of Arles (Bouches-du-Rhône) where he was serving his sentence.

Yvan Colonna was condemned for the assassination of the prefect Claude Érignac, on February 6, 1998. A year after the tragedy, members of the arrested commando implicated him. Before going on the run, he gave a television interview to claim his innocence. “Perhaps we have the profile of the people who are responsible for this action, but we have nothing to do with it”he said then. He will maintain this version until the end. Arrested on July 4, 2003 in the maquis, he was sentenced to life imprisonment in June 2011, after three trials.

He had been asking for several years for family reunification and a transfer to Corsica, refused in view of his particularly reported prisoner status. On the evening of March 22, the government announced that two accomplices of Yvan Colonna will be transferred to a Corsican prison by mid-April.