BFMTV INFO. Corsican shepherd Yvan Colonna, sentenced to life in prison for the murder of Prefect Claude Erignac, was taken to Arles Hospital before being transferred to Marseille on Wednesday.
Yvan Colonna was sentenced to life in prison for the assassination of Corsican prefect Claude Erignac in 1998, and another detainee was assaulted this morning in Arles prison, BFMTV reported on Wednesday. An investigation has been launched by the Tarascon public prosecutor’s office in Bouches-du-Rhône to shed light on the circumstances of the attack.
Yvan Colonna is in serious condition and was taken to Arles hospital, where he is currently in intensive care. According to AFP, his vital prognosis is engaged. The former Corsican shepherd was strangled by a fellow prisoner who threw himself on him during a period dedicated to sports activity, in the prison weight room, reports a prison source to BFMTV. No incident in custody between the two men had been reported.
As soon as the inanimate victim was discovered by a prison guard, the internal emergency services provided cardiac massage less than 3 minutes after the alert.
When the firefighters and then the SMUR arrived, Yvan Colonna was unconscious, his pulse being very weak. The resuscitators, however, managed to restart his cardiac activity.
The co-detainee, a former jihadist
According to our information, the co-detainee had been sentenced to 9 years in prison for “criminal association in connection with a terrorist enterprise” and was a former jihadist who took part in the war in Afghanistan. He had been serving his sentence at the central house in Arles since 2019, according to the Tarascon prosecutor.
The 61-year-old Corsican independence activist was arrested in July 2003 for the February 1998 assassination of Prefect Claude Erignac in Ajaccio after four years in the bush. He has always denied the facts.
Sentenced to life imprisonment in 2007, then to life imprisonment with a 22-year security sentence on appeal in 2009, he was sentenced a third time to life imprisonment (without security period) in 2011 after the annulment by the Court of Cassation of the verdict of appeal for defect of form. Imprisoned in Arles, Yvan Colonna made several requests for reconciliation in Corsica, but all were refused.
His attacker was taken into custody by the criminal investigation department of the judicial police. The National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor’s Office was contacted regarding Yvan Colonna’s background.
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