The Corsican independence activist Yvan Colonna, sentenced since 2012 to life for the assassination of the prefect Erignac in 1998, died on Monday as a result of his violent attack in prison on March 2.
Yvan Colonna had been very seriously injured by another inmate who had attacked him in Arles prison.
Read alsoThe aggression of Yvan Colonna examined by the deputies
Definitively sentenced since 2012 to life imprisonment for the assassination of the prefect Erignac in 1998, Yvan Colonna had been released by law since 2021. Unlike the two other members of the commando Alain Ferrandi and Pierre Alessandri, he had not yet filed a request for adjustment of sentence on the date of his attack.
The government announced on March 8 that Yvan Colonna was no longer considered a "
particularly reported detainee"
(DPS).
"This decision (...) is based on the particular seriousness of Yvan Colonna's health situation",
Matignon then argued.
His attacker Franck Elong Abé, who was serving several sentences including one of nine years' imprisonment for "terrorist criminal association", has been indicted for attempted terrorist assassination since March 6.
Arrested by the American army in Afghanistan, this 36-year-old man had experienced
"a very chaotic journey at the start of his incarceration",
marked by several transfers, violence towards his entourage
"but above all (...) a large number of suicide attempts”
, detailed Laurent Ridel, the director of the penitentiary administration of Arles.
When he arrived in Arles in the fall of 2019, he had been placed in solitary confinement for six months and
“his behavior will change markedly”,
leading to his passage into classic detention in April 2020. He was still perceived as
“a person who does not “Was not totally stable from a psychological point of view”
, but there had been
“no objective signal of deterioration”
in his behavior, assured Laurent Ridel.
Read alsoYvan Colonna: why the state is reluctant to allow the return of members of the Erignac commando to their island