A young man was sentenced Wednesday by the Marseille criminal court to three years in prison, two of which were suspended, for having participated in the fire at the Ajaccio court in 2022.
On the firm part, the four months already spent in pre-trial detention will be counted and the rest will be spent under an electronic bracelet. This conviction is accompanied by a work or training obligation and a five-year ban on possessing or carrying a weapon.
Prosecutor Ahmed Chafaï, who had requested three years, estimated that this sentence was “a minimum for acts of such seriousness” affecting the “symbol of the State”.
On the night of March 9 to 10, 2022, while Corsica was set ablaze following the fatal attack in prison by Yvan Colonna, demonstrators set fire to the Ajaccio judicial court, causing more than 600,000 euros of damage.
The investigation was quickly moved to Marseille, the magistrates of Ajaccio having been very affected by this event. And the state judicial agency was a civil party in this case.
Kamal A., then aged 21, was identified using his DNA on a beam used to fuel the fire.
On the stand, dressed all in black, he admitted to having taken a beam from a construction site near the court, like other people, and to having placed it on a fire in front of the court.
“I regret,” he repeated several times, explaining that he joined the rioters out of “curiosity” and that he “followed without thinking.”
“Have you been paid? Do you have nationalist demands?” asked President Cécile Pendaries.
But this night watchman with a clean record refuted all these hypotheses, also ensuring that he did not know anyone in the crowd that evening.
His lawyer, Me Philippe Gatti, pleaded “contradictions of a retarded teenager” and called for him not to be made “a scapegoat”.
“To follow unjustifiable sentences would be to set fires,” he warned.
After the fatal attack on independence activist Yvan Colonna, on March 2, 2022 in Arles prison (Bouches-du-Rhône), where he was serving a life sentence for his participation in the assassination of prefect Erignac in 1998 in Ajaccio, numerous demonstrations had been organized in Corsica. And these degenerated almost systematically under the leadership of a handful of demonstrators.
jp/sun/gvy
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