the guard of the prison of Arles defends herself from any breach

A supervisor of the prison of Arles (Bouches-du-Rhône), who had reported disturbing behavior of the murderer of Yvan Colonna before his attack, defended herself before the commission of inquiry of the National Assembly of any failure in terms of security, according to a report posted online on Monday, April 24. The commission of inquiry had discovered that this supervisor had heard, on March 1, 2022, the sentence “I’m going to kill him” in a conversation between three detainees in which Franck Elong Abé, the attacker of Yvan Colonna, took part. She had also noticed that the latter “emptied his cell”.

This information being absent from the data transmitted by the prison administration and not having been mentioned during the hearings in the Assembly, the nationalist deputy of Haute-Corse Jean-Félix Acquaviva, president of this commission, had told the press on March 15 of its “bigger questions” about the “possible attempt to erase this data”.

“I didn’t know who had spoken”

Heard behind closed doors before the commission on April 4, the supervisor confirmed having heard “I’m going to kill him”but explained not having flagged it in the individual inmate tracking software, “precisely because I didn’t know who had spoken, or who he was talking about”. However, she claims to have “figured out” information orally to his supervisor, who had passed the information on to his own manager.

“How sure were you that the information was transmitted?“, insisted the deputies, being surprised that there is no written record of this information “pretty serious” while others, “more insignificant”as “a gift of packets of pasta” between prisoners, are included. “The first supervisor came back to see me to tell me that he had transmitted the information. I respect the hierarchical order”replied the supervisor.

Regarding the second information on the “Changing behaviour” of Franck Elong Abé, the supervisor claimed to have made a written observation. However, this is not included in “software extraction” used in the prison, noted President Jean-Félix Acquaviva. “I may have incorrectly validated or made a bad manipulation”, justified the person concerned, specifying here too that she had reported the information orally to her superiors. The commission’s report is expected in May.