France Télévisions and three of its journalists will be tried on March 15 in Paris, suspected of being responsible for the brief broadcast by France 3 Corse in March 2022 of photos of the attack on Yvan Colonna which led to his death, a learned AFP Thursday, March 2 from a source familiar with the matter.
The Paris public prosecutor's office confirmed to AFP that it had summoned to appear at the 17th chamber of the France Télévisions Criminal Court, via its boss and publication director Delphine Ernotte, and three of its journalists, for "publication of acts of criminal procedure
before their reading in open court
” or complicity in it.
Asked, their lawyer did not respond to AFP.
“Breach of the secrecy of the instruction”
Yvan Colonna, who was serving a life sentence for the assassination of the prefect Erignac in 1998, was violently attacked on March 2, 2022 in the sports hall of the prison of Arles (Bouches-du-Rhône).
After almost three weeks in a coma, he died on March 21 at the age of 61 in a Marseille hospital.
The radicalized detainee implicated for these facts, Franck Elong Abé, a 36-year-old Cameroonian, was serving several sentences, including one of nine years' imprisonment for "
terrorist criminal association
".
Ten snapshots of this attack, taken from video taken by a prison surveillance camera, were briefly broadcast by France 3 Corse on Thursday evening March 17, 2022, leading Yvan Colonna's lawyers to file a complaint for "breach of
secrecy of instruction
”.
"
Shame on France 3
", reacted Stéphane Colonna, Yvan's brother.
After investigation, the prosecution chose to summon the defendants to court for another offence.
For Me Emmanuel Mercinier-Pantalacci, one of the Colonna family's lawyers, "
it is unbearable that the public prosecutor protects the author of the violation of the secrecy of the instruction who chose to make public the images of the murder when the investigations were barely beginning, for the benefit of the assassin's possible accomplices
”.
Read alsoDeath of Yvan Colonna: the stakes of an action against the State
The lawyer will ask for the reopening of the investigations during the hearing on March 15, "
for the purpose of identifying the author
", he told AFP.
This decision is "
inappropriate and unjustified
", reacted Me Sylvain Cormier, another family lawyer.
“
What was sought by the publication of these images was just sensationalism,
” he added in particular.
