The supervisor in charge of the wing where the Corsican separatist was located, who was serving a life sentence for the assassination of the prefect Claude Erignac, showed a “clear lack of vigilance” by remaining “without any reason away” from the place of the facts, which lasted nine minutes, concludes the report of the General Inspectorate of Justice (IGJ), published on the Matignon site in an anonymized version.
As for “the former head of the establishment” Corinne Puglierini, in office until ten days before the attack, the inspection mission points to the “insufficiency” of her management and the absence of “appropriate management” of the commissions for assessing the dangerousness of detainees.
The alleged murderer of Yvan Colonna, a 36-year-old Cameroonian, Franck Elong Abé, had never been referred to a radicalization assessment (QER) district since his arrival at the establishment in 2019, when he was serving several sentences, including one of nine years in prison for “terrorist criminal association”.
He was arrested in Afghanistan by the US military in 2012 before being handed over to France in 2014.
During her hearing by the law commission of the National Assembly, on March 30, Corinne Puglierini had assured that the “behaviour” of the detainee on his arrival in Arles “did not allow an evaluation at the QER” because he was not “able to participate in this evaluation”.
However, she then reported a positive development, which justified her being granted in September 2021 an “auxiliary” position to clean up the prison sports halls.
The IGJ report also deplores “inappropriate programming of video surveillance images”, which “suffered from a serious lack of design and user training”.
It makes twelve recommendations, six of which aim to “strengthen (…) the surveillance of the prison’s activity rooms” and to improve its video surveillance system.
– “Shadow areas” –
More broadly, he recommends reminding the entire prison administration that the “primary vocation” of video surveillance “aims to intervene immediately to put an end to an incident”.
The Prime Minister “decided to follow all the recommendations” of the report, said Matignon.
Elisabeth Borne will ask the Minister of Justice in particular for “an inspection mission on the assessment of neighborhoods for the assessment and management of radicalization” (QER), a system deployed five years ago, of which “it seems necessary to draw up a balance sheet”.
The IGJ report was given to the Prime Minister and not to the Minister of Justice Eric Dupond-Moretti because, the latter having been Yvan Colonna’s lawyer, he is forced to withdraw from everything concerning his former client. .
On March 2, Yvan Colonna was violently attacked in the sports hall of the central house in Arles by Franck Elong Abé. He died of his injuries after three weeks in a coma.
This detainee, who explained that he attacked Yvan Colonna because he had “blasphemed”, was indicted for murder in connection with a terrorist enterprise.
The attack had aroused anger and controversy and revived tensions in Corsica, while Yvan Colonna had long demanded his incarceration on the island.
“The individual responsibilities of the supervisors 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”, reacted Thursday to the AFP Emmanuel Mercinier-Pantalacci, one of the lawyers of the separatist.
Marie-Antoinette Maupertuis, autonomist president of the assembly of Corsica, welcomed to AFP the publication of the report, which corresponds to a “demand for truth and justice”.
“We will have to look more deeply into the subject because there are still gray areas and areas of questioning”, declared to AFP the nationalist deputy of Haute-Corse Jean-Felix Acquaviva, who announced Thursday morning a next “commission “parliamentary inquiry” to “shed light on the dysfunctions” that led to the death of Yvan Colonna.
