COLONNA. An agent and the ex-director of Arles prison are accused of “failures” and held partly responsible for the fatal attack on Yvan Colonna in March 2022 according to a report by the General Inspectorate of Justice.
[Mis à jour le 29 juillet 2022 à 14h08] Who is responsible for the attack on Yvan Colonna detained in Arles prison, in the Bouches-du-Rhône, last March? Partly in the penitentiary center according to the report of the General Inspectorate of Justice (IGJ) published yesterday. The deadly attack by the Corsican separatist has aroused excitement and anger on the island of beauty, where many, including elected officials, are looking for a culprit. A custodial officer and the former head of the prison are accused of “misconduct” according to the report and will face “disciplinary proceedings” on the decision of the Prime Minister.
In the attack on Yvan Colonna, the IGJ first notes “clear lack of vigilance” on the part of the supervisor who was responsible for watching over the wing of the building where the attack took place. The agent would have “stayed, without any reason, away from the corridor leading to the place of the facts”, details the report which denounces a “routine combined with a proximity with the protagonists” altering the quality of his work and therefore his supervision of the detainees . The report also attacks the “misuse of images from CCTV cameras” in addition to their “parcel” use which did not make it possible to intervene in time. “The agent […] did not have the images that would have allowed him to give the alert from the start of the attack on Yvan Colonna”, insists the document.
The supervisor is not the only one implicated because the IGJ report accuses Corinne Puglierini, director of the prison until 10 days before the attack, “insufficient management” and the presence of the aggressor of Yvan Colonna, Franck Elong Abé, in “ordinary detention” while the individual notably charged with “association of terrorist criminals” should, according to the inspectors, have been in a radicalization assessment district (QER). On March 30, three weeks after the attack, Corinne Puglierini defended herself before the law commission explaining that the prisoner was not “able to participate in this evaluation” and therefore could not be placed in the QER . The head of the establishment had also mentioned a positive evolution in the behavior of the prisoner which had enabled Franck Elong Abé to obtain a post of “auxiliary” to clean the sports halls of the prison.
“Legal proceedings” taken after the aggression of Yvan Colonna
As of its publication on July 28, 2022, the report on the aggression of the separatist Corsica Yvan Colonna was handed over to Matignon. The Prime Minister, after reading the document, announced the triggering of “disciplinary proceedings” against the surveillance officer and the former director of the prison, responsible for “lack of active vigilance”. According to the press release, the head of government also “decided to follow all the recommendations”. In total, the IGP report specifies twelve, half of which aims to “strengthen […] surveillance of the prison’s activity rooms” and to improve the video surveillance system. Another recommendation deserves attention, that which suggests holding an “inspection mission on the evaluation of the evaluation and management of radicalization”, a five-year-old system on which “it seems necessary to take stock”. Elisabeth Borne also kept the commitment made by announcing the publication of the IGJ report in an anonymized version so as not to expose the persons concerned.
If it is up to Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne to make these decisions, it is partly because of the importance and sensitivity of the case, but also and above all because the Minister of Justice, Eric Dupond -Moretti, was at the time of the trial on the murder of the prefect Erignac the lawyer of Yvan Colonna. The Keeper of the Seals must therefore, to avoid the conflict of interest, keep away from what concerns the case of the aggression of Yvan Colonna.
The State partly responsible for the death of Yvan Colonna?
The report of the General Inspectorate of Justice is supposed to provide answers and shed light on the conditions which made possible the aggression of Yvan Colonna in prison. He points to the faults of a prison officer, of the surveillance system and even of the management of prisoners by the former director of the prison. But the publication of the report only half satisfies the lawyers of Yvan Colonna who always denounce the role of the State in the fatal attack on the Corsican detainee. It is once again the refusal of the State to transfer the separatist and assassin of the prefect Erignac to the Corsican prison of Borgo which is criticized. “The individual responsibilities of the guards cannot hide the fundamental responsibility of the political power which deliberately prevented Yvan Colonna from serving his sentence near his home, in violation of prison rules, out of state revenge”, declared Thursday July 27 Emmanuel Mercinier -Pantalacci, one of Yvan Colonna’s lawyers.
Lawyers are not the only ones to be dissatisfied. The President of the Corsican Executive Council, Gille Simeoni, indicated this Friday, July 29 before the Corsican Assembly that the announcements of the Prime Minister and the conclusions of the report “cannot be enough to fulfill our quest, our demand for truth and justice” . He assured that this “assassination is a political fact and not a news item” affirming that “all the elements have not been provided”. Thursday, July 28, the nationalist deputy of Haute-Corse Jean-Félix Acquaviva for his part announced the forthcoming opening of a parliamentary “commission of inquiry” to “shed light on the dysfunctions” having led to the death of Yvan Colonna.
Yvan Colonna violently attacked in prison
On Wednesday March 3, in the morning, Yvan Colonna, imprisoned in Arles since 2013, was violently attacked by another detainee. It is during a sports session, in the weight room of the penitentiary center ahead Le Figaro, that Yvan Colonna was attacked and strangled by a man, for reasons that have not yet been determined. The Corsican was alone in the room, performing a physical exercise session, when another inmate entered the room to clean it, according to the account of the World. The sixty-year-old was, it seems, strangled and suffocated with a plastic bag after being trampled and beaten by this fellow prisoner. He was quickly transferred to hospital in Arles at the end of the morning, admitted to intensive care and placed on a respirator. His vital prognosis was also engaged as soon as he arrived at the hospital. He was then transferred to the Marseille side.
Who is Yvan Colonna’s attacker?
According to several media, Yvan Colonna was attacked by Franck Elong-Abé, a detainee of Cameroonian nationality, convicted of criminal association with a view to preparing an act of terrorism and a former jihadist in Afghanistan. France 3 Corse specifies that he is a 36-year-old man, known for Islamist radicalization. Before being imprisoned in Arles, Franck Elong-Abé was in Condé-sur-Sarthe (Orne), in a prison where he was sentenced multiple times for several incidents, including a hostage-taking in 2019 and a burning of his cell.
Yvan Colonna condemned for the assassination of the prefect Claude Erignac
On February 6, 1998, the prefect of Claude Erignac was shot three 9mm caliber bullets in the back, fired by a man from a pistol stolen from the gendarmes a few months earlier. Denounced by the people with whom he had co-organized his murderous enterprise, Yvan Colonna fled and was on the run until July 4, 2003, when he was arrested. After a trial at first instance, an appeal and an appeal in cassation, Yvan Colonna is definitively condemned for “murder in connection with a terrorist enterprise”. He has always refuted the accusations made against him.