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Yvan Colonna (archive photo): The separatist had been sentenced to life imprisonment for the assassination of Prefect Claude Erignac
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- / AFP
Corsican separatist Yvan Colonna, convicted of murdering a French prefect, is dead. Colonna has succumbed to serious injuries sustained in an attack by a fellow prisoner in early March, his family said.
According to the family's lawyer, Patrice Spinosi, Colonna died in a hospital in Marseille.
Another inmate attacked and critically injured the 61-year-old Colonna in his prison in Arles, southern France, in early March.
After the attack, there were days of serious riots in Corsica, in which dozens of people were injured.
Because of the unrest, France's head of state Emmanuel Macron held out the prospect of a debate on the island's autonomy last week.
Colonna, a Corsican shepherd and independence fighter, was convicted in France of the assassination of Prefect Claude Erignac in February 1998 and sentenced to life imprisonment.
Colonna had always denied the crime and had gone before the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR).
However, the Strasbourg judges dismissed his claim as inadmissible.
A group of Corsican nationalists shot dead Erignac in the street in Ajaccio on February 6, 1998, as he was about to go to a concert with his wife.
A year after the murder, several members of the Corsican commando accused Colonna of the crime.
They later withdrew their statements, saying the police pressured them during the interrogations.
Colonna went into hiding after the death of the prefect and was only caught in the summer of 2003 in a shepherd's hut in Corsica.
He explained his years of flight by saying that he was branded the culprit from the start.
ime/AFP