The suspect in the murder of Yvan Colonna in the prison of Arles (Bouches-du-Rhône) had been the subject of two disturbing observations the day before the attack, which do not appear in the data transmitted by the administration penitentiary, announced Wednesday the commission of inquiry of the National Assembly, pointing to a “possible erasure” of this information.
On March 1, 2022, a supervisor heard “a conversation between three detainees including Franck Elong Abé, where the term “I’m going to kill him” appeared” and she noticed that the latter “emptied his cell”, according to a document sent to him. a few days ago by prison intelligence to the commission of inquiry into the “dysfunctions” that led to the death of the Corsican independence activist.
However, these two observations are absent from the data transmitted by the prison administration and were not mentioned during the hearings in the Assembly, underlined during a press conference the nationalist deputy of Haute-Corse Jean-Félix Acquaviva , chairman of this committee.
Doubts and questions
“We have the greatest questions and the greatest doubts (…) as to the possible attempt to erase this data” in the software of the prison administration, he declared. “We do not forbid any legal process” if this “hypothesis” was proven, added the deputy, alongside the commission’s rapporteur, Laurent Marcangeli (Horizons).
On March 2, 2022, Yvan Colonna, who was serving a life sentence in the central house of Arles for the assassination of the prefect Claude Erignac, had been violently attacked by Franck Elong Abé, a 36-year-old man who was serving several sentences. including one of nine years for “terrorist association of criminals”. He died of his injuries after three weeks in a coma.
The National Assembly’s law commission had held several hearings on this tragedy in the spring of 2022, including those of the head of the establishment and the director of the prison administration, but several deputies then called for a commission of inquiry. , where interviewees must take an oath.
Legal proceedings for “murder in connection with a terrorist enterprise” are also open.