The French judiciary on Thursday suspended the prison sentence of a Corsican nationalist jailed for the assassination of a top official, as the government seeks to ease tensions and end violent clashes on the Mediterranean island, reports FRANCE 24.
Yvan Colonna, who has been 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 2nd 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 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.
A judge ruled that Colonna should be accorded a suspension of his sentence "for medical reasons", a judiciary source, who asked not to be named, told AFP.
The request had been made by his lawyers and also approved by prosecutors.
Colonna remains in hospital in Marseille but the ruling means he is no longer under the administration of the prison authorities.
The most immediate effect is that his relatives will need no permission to visit him in hospital.