France: Yvan Colonna in serious condition after his attack by a fellow prisoner in Arles prison

Yvan Colonna, after his arrest on July 4, 2003, in Corse-du-Sud in a sheepfold in Porto-Pollo near Propriano.

AFP

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Yvan Colonna is between life and death.

The Corsican independence activist, 61 years old and convicted for the assassination of the prefect Erignac in 1998, was attacked in Arles prison on Wednesday morning by another detainee, a 36-year-old jihadist.

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Yvan Colonna was in the courtyard of Arles prison when he was beaten with his bare hands by a fellow prisoner.

It would be a 36-year-old jihadist. 

According to AFP, the man, sentenced to 9 years in prison for terrorist criminal association, put a bag over his head and left him unconscious, very seriously injured.

We do not know why he attacked Yvan Colonna who was transferred from the hospital in Arles (Bouches-du-Rhône) to a hospital in Marseille, we learned from a source close to the investigation.

“ 

 ”, also indicated to AFP one of his lawyers, Me Emmanuel Mercinier Pantalacci.

This type of coma results from oxygen deprivation in the brain.

Sentenced for the murder of the prefect Erignac

Arrested in July 2003, in a sheepfold after 4 years on the run in the Corsican maquis, the nationalist militant had been imprisoned in Arles for several years and was, in theory, the subject of reinforced surveillance because of his status as " particularly flagged detainee”.

He had been sentenced to life imprisonment for

, who was shot in the back on his way to the theater in Ajaccio on February 6, 1998. Yvan Colonna has always denied the facts, claiming never killed anyone.

In 2016, the European Court of Human Rights rejected his complaint concerning his imprisonment and definitively validated his sentence.

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