This Wednesday, the body of Yvan Colonna, an independence activist sentenced for the assassination of the prefect Erignac and fatally assaulted in prison, will be transferred to Corsica. The date of his funeral has not yet been announced.
Yvan Colonna, 61, died Monday evening in Marseille where he was hospitalized following his attack on March 2 at Arles prison (Bouches-du-Rhône) by a fellow prisoner. He was serving a life sentence there for his participation in the assassination of the prefect Claude Erignac in 1998 in Ajaccio.
The PNT requested the “assassination in connection with a terrorist enterprise”
He had been violently attacked in the prison sports hall by Franck Elong Abé, a 36-year-old Cameroonian, who was serving several sentences, including one of nine years’ imprisonment for “terrorist criminal association”.
This radicalized detainee has since been indicted for attempted terrorist assassination. Following the death of Yvan Colonna, the National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor’s Office on Monday requested the reclassification of this indictment as “assassination in connection with a terrorist enterprise”. According to several sources, the aggressor of Yvan Colonna had justified his act by the fact that the Corsican militant would have blasphemed and “spoke badly of the Prophet”.
The day after the announcement of his death, meditation prevailed on the island, contrasting with the scenes of violence that marked the various demonstrations of support for the Corsican activist for nearly two weeks.