Commando Erignac: Alain Ferrandi fixed Thursday on his request for adjustment of sentence

Frédéric Michel with AFP 7:18 a.m., February 23, 2023, modified at 7:22 a.m., February 23, 2023

Alain Ferrandi, sentenced in 2003 to life for his participation in the assassination in Corsica of the prefect Erignac, will be fixed Thursday on his request for adjustment of sentence, less than a month after the justice granted a semi-freedom to another member of the commando, Pierre Alessandri.

The decision of the court for the application of anti-terrorism sentences (Tapat) will be particularly scrutinized, on the eve of the resumption in Paris of discussions between Corsican elected officials and the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin on the institutional future of the island.

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This cycle of consultations, launched in the summer of 2022, was seized up following the new refusals of justice to grant a sentence adjustment to Alain Ferrandi and Pierre Alessandri, both sentenced to life imprisonment for the assassination on February 6. 1998 of the prefect Claude Erignac, and releasable since 2017. On January 31, the Paris Court of Appeal finally granted Pierre Alessandri a probationary semi-freedom measure for conditional release, almost 25 years to the day after the assassination in Ajaccio of the prefect Claude Erignac.

A semi-freedom measure

Alain Ferrandi, now 62, has been asking for a similar sentence adjustment for several years.

He has so far suffered two refusals from anti-terrorism justice.

In February 2022, Tapat gave the green light, but the decision was reversed on appeal three months later after a suspensive appeal by the national anti-terrorism prosecution (Pnat).

Like Pierre Alessandri, Alain Ferrandi asks for a semi-freedom measure allowing him to work during the day outside the prison of Borgo (Haute-Corse), where the two men had been transferred in April 2022 after the deadly attack in detention of the third member of the Erignac commando, Yvan Colonna.

This transfer from the central house of Poissy in the Paris region to the Corsican prison had been permitted by the lifting by the executive of their status as "particularly reported detainees".