Top suspect missing at murder trial

Paul Webster in Paris Wednesday June 4, 2003 The Guardian

There were eight Corsicans in the dock at a special Paris assize court yesterday, accused of complicity in a political murder that changed the course of the island's history.

But the focus was on the absent figure of the alleged assassin, a shepherd who has made a mockery of police for the past five years.

According to the prosecution it was Yvan Colonna, 30, the son of a former socialist MP, who walked up behind the central government's senior official on the island on the night of February 6 1998 and murdered him with three bullets in the head.

The killing of the prefect, Claude Erignac, 60, who had tried to stop 25 years of pro-independence violence, set off a series of manhunts through the wild Corsican maquis to catch Mr Colonna, portrayed locally as a modern Robin Hood.

Despite the mobilisation of hundreds of gendarmes it is still not known whether he is on the island or has been helped to escape abroad. His presence has been reported in a dozen countries, from Gabon to Venezuela.

His eight alleged accomplices, who staked out the streets of Ajaccio as Erignac walked to a concert hall, are being tried with three other men accused of terrorist attacks on the mainland before France conceded additional self-rule measures.

All the accused deny the allegations.

Seven judges will sit for five weeks without a jury.

The socialist interior minister at the time of the attack, Jean-Pierre Chevènement - who subsequently resigned in protest at the proposal to give Corsica more autonomy - said that the assassination team had achieved its political goal.

"The murderers wanted to force the state to bend and abandon firm policies," he said. "The assassination was the work of a violent clandestine movement [Corsica Nazione] which wanted to bring the government to the negotiating table."