A supervisor overheard a conversation with Franck Elong Abé, indicted for the murder of the Corsican prisoner, the day before the incident. The parliamentary committee suspects this data, which does not appear in the detention reports, of having been erased.
" I'm going to kill him. » It is not rare to hear this kind of sentences in the central prisons, like that of Arles (Bouches-du-Rhône) for example, where Yvan Colonna and the man indicted, since, for his assassination, Franck Elong Abé. It is more annoying, on the other hand, to learn that this threat was pronounced on 1er March 2022, the day before the murder of the Corsican particularly guarded detainee (DPS), during an overheard conversation by a supervisor between three prisoners, including Franck Elong Abé. The latter, notes the same supervisor, was caught the same day tidying up his cell, as if he was going to leave it. Asked about the reasons for this sudden storage, he said: “I empty myself. »
This information was not known until now. They were only recently brought to the attention of the parliamentary commission of inquiry into the conditions of the assassination of Yvan Colonna, chaired by the Corsican nationalist deputy Jean-Félix Acquaviva (Liberties, Independents, Overseas and Territories). He revealed them during a press conference held on Wednesday March 15 with the commission's rapporteur, Laurent Marcangeli (Corse-du-Sud, Horizons).
This information was communicated to the commission of inquiry by the National Prison Intelligence Service (SNRP). More troubling, no official of this intelligence service had mentioned it during the hearings before the commission, which to date has heard twenty-five people.
An empty form from January 29, 2022
The supervisor who heard the comments quoted said that she transmitted them " the same day " - that is to say the day before the assassination of Yvan Colonna - at his hierarchical level, without anyone knowing what was done with it. She adds having "made an observation" in the dedicated software. Even though the sentence " I'm going to kill him " cannot be formally attributed to Franck Elong Abé, it should at least have attracted attention, given the profile of the detainee. The agent sent two letters to her superiors after the attack, detailing several incidents, including the conversation and the tidying up of the cell.
At the time of the events, the Arles plant had 125 detainees, 15 of whom were particularly reported – including Yvan Colonna, who was serving a life sentence there for the assassination of the prefect Erignac, and four detainees for Islamist terrorism (TIS ). It is not a huge detention center like Condé-sur-Sarthe (Orne) or Les Baumettes, in Marseille, where Franck Elong Abé stayed.
Another reason for astonishment of the commission of inquiry: Franck Elong Abé's file on the Genesis software, intended to ensure the monitoring of DPS by the prison administration, is empty from January 29, 2022, when the prisoner was known to very regularly cause incidents. "Four to six a month", according to the chairman of the committee. When the commission of inquiry was surprised by this, the prison administration provided additional information stating a “food exchange” − a package of pasta − with another inmate, explaining that this information was under "a separate tab". Nothing else, and especially not the incident mentioned by the supervisor.
“We do not exclude ourselves from any legal process”
To what do you attribute this anomaly? “We have the biggest questions (...) as to the possible attempt to erase this data", said Mr. Acquaviva. “We do not exclude ourselves from any legal process” if this " assumption " was proven, threatened the Corsican deputy. In the meantime, the commission of inquiry intends to interview several officials of the prison administration and the SNRP once again.
Wednesday's revelations are in addition to several disturbing elements, such as the fact that Franck Elong Abé has never gone through a radicalization assessment district (QER) despite five recommendations to this effect from interdisciplinary commissions. This non-passage is due in particular, in one of the cases, to the reluctance of the national anti-terrorism prosecution (PNAT) and the sentence enforcement judge, who opposed it on the pretext that it was too dangerous for the other TIS. Another strangeness: under no circumstances can a TIS considered dangerous, as Franck Elong Abé is, be subject to the ordinary detention regime and benefit from an auxiliary job, as was the case.
Beyond the assassination of Yvan Colonna, the rapporteur of the commission of inquiry, Laurent Marcangeli, outlined some conclusions of the report which will be delivered in May. In particular, he insisted on the fact that“we cannot leave it to the administrative, and therefore political, power alone to decide who is a particularly guarded prisoner or not in prison. This type of decision needs to be brought to justice.", he added.
Source: © Death of Yvan Colonna: revelations on the course and possible threats made by his attacker
