Four farmers were sentenced on Tuesday in Bastia to a one-year suspended prison sentence and a fine of 800 euros for having committed damage in March 2022 to the premises of the Haute-Corse departmental employment directorate. A fifth was sentenced for complicity to three months in prison suspended and 200 euros fine, while a sixth was released. Four of them are members of the Young Farmers’ Union (JA), and one is the president of the Rural Coordination Union of Corsica.
An action to denounce the price of fuel
These degradations had taken place on March 17 against the premises of the departmental direction of employment, work, solidarity and protection of the populations (DDETSPP) of Haute-Corse, had then specified Arnaud Viornery, prosecutor of the Republic of Bastia. “Several people broke windows and threw hazard warning lights in the premises of this administration”, he indicated, specifying that “during the searches carried out in these people’s homes, handguns and long weapons had been found”.
The arrests had aroused the anger of nationalist parties, including the independence party Core in Fronte and the autonomist party Femu a Corsica, as well as the agricultural union FDSEA of Haute-Corse.
Denouncing “an unprecedented raid”, the union had indicated that the degradations had been committed on the sidelines of the blocking of the Marana oil depot, in Lucciana (Haute-Corse), to denounce the increase in the price of fuel.