Yvan Colonna is still between life and death in Marseille hospital, after his violent attack by an inmate on Wednesday March 2 in Arles prison. Definitively condemned in 2011 for the assassination of the prefect Claude Érignac, the Corsican was attacked while he was in the weight room by an Islamist detainee, passed by Afghanistan. The National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office took up the investigation on Thursday. Since Wednesday, many voices have been raised to denounce the non-transfer to Corsica of Yvan Colonna, and other Corsican detainees.
>> What we know about the attack on Yvan Colonna by a fellow prisoner in Arles prison
It was Yvan Colonna’s lawyers who first asked this question. “His family expresses all their anger and incomprehension”writes in a press release Patrice Spinosi, one of the defenders of the shepherd of Cargèse. “We can legitimately think that if he had been brought together in Corsica, continues the criminal. Yvan Colonna would not have been delivered to the risks of the extremist violence of which he was the victim.
For ten years, Yvan Colonna’s lawyers have been fighting to obtain his transfer to Corsica. But for that, his status as a particularly guarded prisoner must be lifted, because the Borgo prison, the only island prison that can accommodate long sentences, is not equipped to monitor particularly reported prisoners (DPS). The directory of DPS includes nearly 350 detainees in France, this status is linked to the risk of escape, behavior in detention and the dangerousness of the detainee. The prison administration and the national anti-terrorist prosecutor’s office have always refused the lifting of this status concerning Yvan Colonna.
Wednesday evening, several hundred Corsicans demonstrated in Ajaccio, Bastia and Corte to denounce what they call “the major responsibility of the state” in the aggression of the Corsican nationalist. Gilles Simeoni, the president of the Executive Council of Corsica and former lawyer for Yvan Colonna said the same thing Thursday morning on franceinfo: “Regardless of the motives of the alleged perpetrator and the circumstances of the assault, the state and the government bear an overwhelming responsibility. This is obvious because if the right to reconciliation had been applied, as it should have been be, the drama would not have happened.”
“There is a logic of state revenge when for years French or European law is set aside.”
Gilles Simeoni, President of the Executive Council of Corsicaat franceinfo
The other question posed by Yvan Colonna’s family is how this particularly closely watched detainee could have been the victim of an assassination attempt when threats of Islamist reprisals have weighed on Corsican detainees for years, assures Gilles Simeoni in particular.
Beyond the Colonna case, this question of the transfer of Corsican detainees has long poisoned relations between the island and Paris. Many see it as a politicized management of a legal affair. In particular concerning two other members of the Érignac commando, Pierre Alessandri and Alain Ferrandi, both also sentenced to life imprisonment. Their 18-year security period ended in 2017, since then they have requested the lifting of their particularly guarded detainee status. Seven times the government has opposed it. “The time does not seem to me to have come to make this transfer”, indicated in January 2021 the Prime Minister to the newspaper The world (article reserved for subscribers).
Alain Ferrandi even obtained a semi-freedom regime last week, day work, and night at the Borgo prison, but the national anti-terrorist prosecutor’s office immediately appealed this decision to the Paris sentence enforcement court. On Twitter, LREM deputy for Eure Bruno Questel was indignant: “To deny them the right to reconciliation, the right to live after 24 years of incarceration is to condemn them to death.”
But for Dominique Érignac, the widow of the prefect, the page will never be turned, as she recalled in 2018, when the head of state went to Corsica to commemorate the assassination of her husband. “Since twenty yearsshe had said in a fragile voice, we are only allowed to live with the death of Claude and his absence: this is the sentence to which the terrorists have condemned us all three.