Violent clashes took place in several Corsica cities between separatists and the police

At night between Wednesday and Thursday in several Corsican cities, including Ajaccio, the capital of the French island, hundreds of demonstrators for independence. collide with the police. Demonstrators were protesting the attack in prison on Ivan Colonna, the leader of the Corsican independence movement that killed Governor Claude Irignac in 1998 and who has since been in Arles prison in Provence.

According to the Corsican authorities’ account, on March 2, Colonna was attacked by another inmate, Frank Elong Abi, a Cameroonian who had been convicted of various crimes. The latter allegedly attacked Colonna to insult his Islamic faith and strangled and beat him for eight minutes, leaving him in a very serious condition.

But this account did not convince many Corsican separatists, who accused the prison police of not intervening in Colonna’s defense. In recent days, there have already been several demonstrations in support of Colonna, but the one that took place on Wednesday evening was the most violent.

Demonstrators clashed with police in the cities of Ajaccio, Bastia and Calvi: they threw Molotov cocktails at the police, set fire to the street, looted a bank and raided the Ajaccio courthouse.