Claude Chossat was sentenced to eight years in prison by the Assize Court of Bouches-du-Rhone for complicity in the murder in 2008 of Richard Casanova, the founder of the Brise de Mer, a criminal gang born in the 1970s in Corsica.

"Repenti" self-proclaimed Sea Breeze, Claude Chossat was sentenced to eight years in prison Friday by the Assize Court of Bouches-du-Rhone for complicity in the assassination in 2008 of Richard Casanova, the alleged founder of this gang Corsican criminal.

After nine days of trial and five and a half hours of deliberations, the verdict fell: the ex-handyman of Francis Mariani, another baron of the Sea Breeze, a criminal band born in the 1970s and bearing the name 'a bar of the port of Bastia, returned Friday night in prison, while he was free under judicial control since 2012, pending this trial. The sentence pronounced by President Tournier is halfway between the acquittal requested by the defense and the 15 years of imprisonment required Thursday by the Advocate General Pierre Cortes.

From the murder charge to the conviction for "complicity"

Accused of the assassination in organized gang of Richard Casanova, aka "The Liar", committed on April 23, 2008, Chossat had always denied this murder, and tirelessly used a status of "repentant" self-proclaimed to claim a mitigation of he was suffering. According to him, it was his former boss, Francis Mariani, who would have pressed the trigger of the SIG laser sniper rifle that day, Porto-Vecchio (Corse-du-Sud). But Francis Mariani was never able to answer these accusations: he died in January 2009, on the run, in the explosion of a hangar.

Me Edouard Martial, one of Claude Chossat's four lawyers, hailed a decision "which recognizes that (his client) is not an assassin, that he has no blood on his hands". The decision to appeal or not will be made in consultation with Chossat, depending on how the sentence will be developed.