“We don’t have the impression that it will stop quickly”, testify Thursday, March 10 on franceinfo two CRS mobilized in Corsica for several days, the day after violent incidents in Bastia, Calvi and Ajaccio. These clashes took place a week after the attack on Yvan Colonna by a fellow jihadist prisoner in Arles prison (Bouches-du-Rhône).
Alain Pichaud, delegate of the Unit SGP police union of CRS 59, based in the Var, and Gabriel Meier, delegate of the Unsa police union of CRS 36, based in Moselle, saw the tensions “grow in power” since Yvan Colonna is plunged into a post-anoxic coma, after being beaten, strangled and deprived of oxygen by a radicalized fellow prisoner. The suspect was indicted for “attempted assassination in connection with a terrorist enterprise”.
Early Thursday afternoon, Gabriel Meier, in operation in Ajaccio, affirms that “a few explosions” are heard after a rather calm demonstration in the morning. “It’s going up slowly.” For now, it’s “calmer” than Wednesday evening. “It was the highlight because we were attacked by about 300 demonstrators” in front of the Haute-Corse prefecture in Bastia, “for five hours”, says Alain Pichaud. Wednesday evening, around forty people were injured in Corsica, including 23 CRS in Bastia, Ajaccio and Calvi. Alain Pichaud was himself slightly injured in the tibia. The wounds of other CRS are “bruises”.
According to Alain Pichaud, the demonstrators had “Molotov cocktails, firework mortars, pétanque balls, slingshots, steel balls and cobblestones of all kinds”. In Ajaccio, where five people were arrested, “rockets” and “homemade bombs” were also used against the CRS, who “taken projectiles a good part of the evening and the night”adds Gabriel Meier.
The protesters are young “relatively violent” and “determined”which are “politically manipulated” and “claim a certain hatred towards the French state”analyzes Gabriel Meier, while the slogan “murderous French state” is again shouted in the processions and tagged on the walls. Supporters of Yvan Colonna accuse the state of being partly responsible for his aggression, having refused, in particular, to transfer him to the prison of Borgo, in Corsica. The CRS, the prefectures and the court of Ajaccio burned are targeted because they represent the state, he believes.
The tensions are moreover quite “localized” in front of these symbolic places, assures Alain Pichaud: “You can’t say that, in the street, you feel a particular animosity. I often practiced Corsica in a professional setting and I remember that, in the 1980s or 1990s, the tension was palpable. is not at all the case now.”