COLONNA. Yvan Colonna is dead, confirmed to the Parisian, Monday, March 21, several sources. The man who had been found guilty of the assassination of the prefect of Corse-du-Sud, Claude Érignac, died three weeks after his attack in prison.
[Mis à jour le 21 mars 2022 à 21h32] Yvan Colonna would have finally succumbed to his injuries. Le Parisien announces this Monday, March 21, 2022 his death, three weeks after his attack. The Ile-de-France daily claims to have information from several concordant sources. The man who had been found guilty of the assassination of the prefect of Corse-du-Sud, Claude Érignac, in 1998, had been serving his sentence in prison since 2003.
Why was Yvan Colonna violently attacked in Arles prison (Bouches-du-Rhône)? This is to be determined by an investigation, conducted by the anti-terrorism prosecution, as announced on Thursday March 3, 2022. The Corsican nationalist activist is between life and death after being lynched by another detainee on Wednesday March 2. Aged 61, the man who was sentenced to life imprisonment, found guilty of having participated in the assassination of the prefect of Corsica Claude Erignac in 1998, is currently in a post-anoxic coma, following a oxygen deprivation in the brain, as indicated by one of his lawyers, Me Emmanuel Mercinier-Pantalacci. Admitted to the North hospital in Marseille, the “shepherd of Cargèse” is therefore in a worrying state, even if one of his other advisers, Me Patrice Spinosi, indicates that there is “no improvement or of deterioration”. According to France 3 Corse, no brain damage was detected during the first analyzes.
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 suffered the wrath of Franck Elong-Abé, a detainee of Cameroonian nationality, convicted of criminal association for the preparation of an act of terrorism and former jihadist in Afghanistan. France 3 Corse specifies that he is a 36-year-old man, known for Islamism. 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.
False information on the death of Yvan Colonna
Yvan Colonna is in a worrying state. But he is not dead, assure his lawyers, contrary to the first information which had circulated, affirming that the sexagenarian had died. “We deny the death of Yvan Colonna on the basis of the information given to us at the moment by the prison administration”, they indicate in a tweet published shortly before 3 p.m. “His condition is very serious, his vital prognosis is engaged. For the moment, he is in intensive care, he is not dead,” added a source familiar with the matter to AFP. France info having announced the death of the prisoner before the declarations of the lawyers, moreover published a corrigendum in which he specifies that Yvan Colonna is in a post-anoxic coma caused by a deprivation of oxygen in the brain.
@sylvaincormier @stellacanava and I deny the death of Yvan Colonna, on the basis of the information given to us at the moment by the prison administration. Yvan Colonna is in intensive care. Think of ellu è ai se.
#@affr @the Parisian @20 minutes— Mercinier&Pantalacci (@Mercinier) March 2, 2022
Yvan Colonna condemned for the assassination of the prefect Claude Erignac
On February 6, 1998, the prefect of Claude Erignac was shot in the back with three 9mm caliber bullets, 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.