After the attempted assassination of Yvan Colonna in prison, Prime Minister Jean Castex officially lifted the status of “particularly reported detainee” (DPS) of Pierre Alessandri and Alain Ferrandi this Friday morning, March 11.
Like Yvan Colonna, sentenced for the assassination of the prefect Erignac in 1998, these two other Corsican separatists are imprisoned for life.
This change in status will allow them to unlock a transfer to Corsica, since no prison on the Island of Beauty could accommodate a DPS prisoner.
Matignon indicated that this decision applies “without delay”, which makes it possible to consider a transfer of the two prisoners currently in a prison in Poissy, in the Yvelines, to the Borgo prison located in the city of Bastia.
A decision that comes at the right time, since it responds to long-standing claims that have become a real subject of major political tension in Corsica, which has been plagued by clashes in recent days. It is therefore “in a spirit of appeasement” that the Prime Minister made this announcement.
Last Tuesday, Jean Castex had already lifted the DPS status of Yvan Colonna, and this “for human reasons”, he said then. Indeed, the Corsican independence activist found himself in a coma after being attacked on March 2 by a fellow prisoner imprisoned for terrorism. An attack of extreme violence which had not failed to be judged by many Corsicans as a provocation, resulting in a night of scuffles in the streets of Ajaccio, the day after the events.
Tensions in Corsica
Tensions which are still very palpable, although the autonomist president of the Executive Council of Corsica, Gilles Simeoni, shared “a feeling of satisfaction” in reaction to Jean Castex’s announcement. “It’s only the law that applies … I want to say finally,” he added.
However, he clarified that “this single gesture will not be enough to calm the explosive situation” in which Corsica currently finds itself. Expecting a broader commitment from the government, Gilles Simeoni, who is also Yvan Colonna’s former lawyer, hoped for “other political signs, and that the government would allow an independent investigation into the more than suspicious circumstances of the attempt murder” of his former client.
In addition, Marie-Antoinette Maupertuis, the autonomist president of the Assembly of Corsica, also estimated in a column in Le Monde, that “nobody or almost does not believe, in Corsica, but also elsewhere in France, in a simple aggression in the French prisons of a detainee by a fellow detainee”. She also did not hesitate to mention the possible fate of Pierre Alessandri and Alain Ferrandi, judging “that they too are in danger”, before saying, this Friday, that “now they must return to Corsica and quickly” .