Clashes in Corsica after prison attack on nationalist figure
Violent clashes broke out overnight between protesters and police on France’s Mediterranean island of Corsica amid anger over the assault in prison of a nationalist figure.
Yvan Colonna, who is serving a life sentence for the assassination in 1998 of a senior regional official, Claude Érignac, is in a coma after being beaten in jail on 2 March by a fellow detainee serving time for terror offences.
Some on the island regard Colonna, who was arrested in 2003 after a fiveyear manhunt that eventually found him living as a shepherd in the Corsican mountains, as a hero in a fight for independence.
Hundreds demonstrated in the main cities of Ajaccio, Calvi and Bastia, and the protests rapidly degenerated into clashes with security forces.
In Ajaccio, protesters broke into the main justice building, setting fire to scrap papers, and went on to ransack a bank. Authorities said 14 people were wounded in Ajaccio alone, including a journalist for France’s TF1 TV channel who was hurt in the leg.
Colonna was jailed in the south of France, and authorities have long rejected his demand to be transferred to Corsica, saying his offence made him a special status detainee.
In an attempt to ease tensions, the prime minister, Jean Castex, removed this status on Tuesday, but the move was seen as too little too late by Colonna’s supporters in Corsica.
French prosecutors have charged Colonna’s alleged jail assailant, Franck Elong Abe, with attempted murder in association with a terror group.
According to France’s top anti-terror prosecutor, Jean-François Ricard, the suspect confessed to the attack, saying he had been angered by “blasphemous statements” made by Colonna behind bars.