Under what circumstances was Yvan Colonna violently attacked? And what "breaches" some could have been avoided? The parliamentary commission of inquiry is trying to answer this by publishing this Tuesday its report on the fatal attack on Corsican independence activist Yvan Colonna in Arles prison in March 2022.
The report is due to be published online later today. In parallel, the chairman of the committee Jean-Félix Acquaviva (Liot MP for Haute-Corse) and the rapporteur Laurent Marcangeli (MP for South Corsica, Horizons) will hold a press conference at the Assembly at 17 pm.
Yvan Colonna, who was serving a life sentence for the murder of prefect Claude Erignac in 1998, was violently assaulted on March 2, 2022 in the prison's sports hall by Franck Elong Abé, a 36-year-old radicalized man convicted in a terrorist case. The 61-year-old Corsican independence activist died three weeks later.
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During its six months of work, the commission focused on the prison treatment of Franck Elong Abé, but also in the circumstances surrounding the attack and the reasons for maintaining the status of "detainee particularly reported" (DPS) of Yvan Colonna, which prevented his transfer to a Corsican prison.
With a question in the background: why was Franck Elong Abé in ordinary detention and how could he find himself alone with Yvan Colonna for 15 minutes? Because the hearings highlighted the worrying profile before and during the detention of this man, also classified DPS, who went to fight with the Taliban in Afghanistan in the early 2010s and who has multiplied incidents in prison.
Prison treatment that intrigues the commission
During her hearing, the former director of the prison of Arles Corinne Puglierini had even assured that the "behavior" of the prisoner with psychiatric disorders upon his arrival in Arles "did not allow an evaluation at the radicalization assessment unit (QER)".
However, she then reported a positive development that justified being granted a coveted position as an "auxiliary" at the end of 2021, to clean up the prison's sports halls. An astonishing "leniency" according to the commission, and "at the antipodes" of the "excessively rigorous" prison treatment of Yvan Colonna, on which the report should largely return.
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Corsican elected officials and the families of Yvan Colonna, Pierre Alessandri and Alain Ferrandi (also sentenced to life imprisonment for the assassination of Prefect Erignac) had been asking for years, in vain, for the lifting of their DPS status which prevented their transfer to Corsica. A purely "political" choice according to them.
The DPS status of Pierre Alessandri and Alain Ferrandi was lifted a few days after the attack on Yvan Colonna. The two men were quickly transferred to a Corsican prison, before being granted semi-liberty in early 2023.
