Yvan Colonna is dead: a look back at the life of the Corsican nationalist activist

Gwladys Laffitte 10:29 p.m., March 21, 2022

Yvan Colonna is dead.

The Corsican detainee, very seriously injured by another detainee who attacked him in Arles prison on March 2, and who had since been in a coma, died on Monday in Marseille.

He had been in a coma until then.

His state of health was very "worrying", confided a few days ago his lawyer Sylvain Cormier.

The most wanted man in France in 1999

His ultra-violent attack, while he was in the prison gym, had been taken over by the national anti-terrorist prosecutor's office, which should therefore, logically, reclassify the facts as assassination in connection with a terrorist enterprise. and terrorist conspiracy.

Yvan Colonna had been in prison since 2003, for the assassination of the prefect Erignac.

In 1999, he became the most wanted man in France.

The one the press nicknamed the shepherd of Cargèse took to the maquis despite the call to surrender from his father, Jean-Hugues Colonna, former socialist deputy of the Alpes-Maritimes. 

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 Corsican nationalist activist Yvan Colonna is dead

"A barbaric act, of extreme gravity"

A few months earlier, in February 1998, the prefect of Corsica Claude Erignac was assassinated with three bullets to the back of the neck.

Yvan Colonna is accused of having been part of the assassin commando.

The attack is then claimed by a Corsican nationalist group.

The case shakes the country.

Jacques Chirac is then President of the Republic.

"The assassination of the representative of the State in Corsica is a barbaric act, extremely serious and unprecedented in our history", he reacts at the time.  

The hunt lasts four years.

Meanwhile, Nicolas Sarkozy became Minister of the Interior and it was he himself who announced, in July 2003, the arrest of Yvan Colonna.

The separatist, he proclaims his innocence and has always done so.

He has never hidden his nationalist commitment, but describes himself as a simple political activist.

He also says that he never killed anyone and he will repeat it during his three trials which each time condemned him to life imprisonment.

A sentence served on the continent and not in Corsica, despite his requests for reconciliation and the steps of his wife.

An eminently political subject 

Yvan Colonna, he claims his innocence and has always done so.

He has never hidden his nationalist commitment, but describes himself as a simple political activist.

He also says that he never killed anyone and he will repeat it during his three trials which each time condemned him to life imprisonment, a sentence served on the continent and not in Corsica, despite his requests for reconciliation. and the actions of his wife.

She even challenges President Macron in 2018: "My son has not seen his father for a year and a half. Please do something".

Incarcerated for 19 years, the detention of Yvan Colonna had become an eminently political subject.

Again last January, parliamentarians had visited him in Arles and pleaded his case.