hundreds of protesters flock to Bastia in support of Yvan Colonna, 11 days after his attack in prison

Several hundred people flocked to Bastia (Haute-Corse), Sunday, March 13 in the afternoon, during a demonstration in support of Yvan Colonna. The Corsican independence activist, sentenced to life imprisonment for the assassination of the prefect Erignac, was the victim of an attack in prison at the beginning of March which left him in a coma.

Around the Bastia courthouse, the starting point of the procession, the streets were closed on Sunday, for fear of possible violence. Banks have also been secured, ATMs protected by wooden panels and garbage containers, regularly used to light fires, removed. Just before the start of the demonstration, the prosecutor of Bastia announced that“about 300 Molotov cocktails [avaie]were discovered” in the city, while clashes have pitted activists and police in several Corsican localities in recent days.

The demonstration in Bastia was initiated by nationalist student unions, joined by all the nationalist parties on the island. On the weekend of March 5, a similar rally had mobilized 4,200 people in Corte, according to the authorities, and 15,000 according to the organizers. Demonstrations had taken place in Corsica the day after the attack on Yvan Colonna, who had been demanding for several years his transfer to a prison on the island. The radicalized detainee suspected of having hit and strangled him was indicted as part of a judicial investigation for “attempted assassination in connection with a terrorist enterprise”, entrusted to the National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor’s Office.