Violent clashes broke out between protesters and police overnight Wednesday to Thursday on France’s Mediterranean island of Corsica as local anger intensified over the assault in prison of a nationalist figure, reports FRANCE 24.
Yvan Colonna, who is serving a life sentence for the assassination in 1998 of Corsica’s top regional official Claude Erignac, is currently in a coma after being beaten on March 2 in jail by a fellow detainee serving time for terror offences.
The incident has stoked anger on the island where some still see Colonna – who was arrested only in 2003 after a five-year manhunt that eventually found him living as a shepherd in the Corsican mountains – as a hero in a fight for independence.
Hundreds demonstrated in the main Corsican cities of Ajaccio, Calvi and Bastia with the protests rapidly degenerating into clashes with security forces, AFP correspondents said.
In Ajaccio, protesters even broke into the main justice building, setting fire to scrap papers. They then went on to ransack a bank.
Local authorities said 14 people were wounded in Ajaccio alone, including a journalist for France’s TF1 TV channel who was hurt in the leg.
Colonna was jailed in the south of France with authorities long rejecting his demand to be transferred to Corsica, saying his offence made him a special status detainee.