To repair the damage caused by the murder of Yvan Colonna in prison and put an end to the proceedings against the administration, the State has offered around 200,000 euros in compensation to the members of his family, their lawyer said on Tuesday. “As it stands, we have this proposal on the table and only part of the family has accepted it for the moment. Things are not yet clearly determined, ”detailed Me Patrice Spinosi, partially confirming information from Le Canard enchaîné.
On behalf of the family of Yvan Colonna, the lawyer had filed, in early April in Marseille, an administrative appeal against the State after the death of the Corsican independence activist following his violent attack by a radicalized fellow prisoner, Franck Elong Abé, in Arles prison on March 2. In this request, the total amount of damage to the family of Yvan Colonna, who was serving a life sentence for the assassination of the prefect Claude Erignac in 1998, was assessed at one million euros.
During the summer, the State submitted a proposal for lower compensation, for a total amount of “approximately” 200,000 euros, said Me Spinosi. “However, it is a significantly larger sum than the usual scales,” he said. If this proposal – which is not limited in time – were accepted by all of the eight applicants, including the parents of Yvan Colonna and his two children, the file would be closed without going through a hearing before the court. administrative.
Two legal proceedings opened
“Everyone has the freedom to do what they want and to accept or not this proposal. We will see more clearly in a few weeks, ”said Me Spinosi, recalling also that the responsibility of the State in this affair was acquired under the very terms of the penitentiary code. According to a law of November 2009, the State is systematically “required to repair the damage resulting from the death of a prisoner caused by violence committed within a prison establishment by another prisoner”.
Contacted, the Chancellery referred to the services of Matignon: the Keeper of the Seals Éric Dupond-Moretti, having been Yvan Colonna’s lawyer, was removed from all of this file to avoid conflicts of interest.
Two legal proceedings are also open in connection with this death, which had aroused great emotion in Corsica: an investigation for “assassination in connection with a terrorist enterprise”, in which his alleged attacker is indicted, and a second for violation of the secrecy of the instruction, launched after the broadcast on France 3 of images of his lynching.