Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

VIOLENCE

Three charged over slaying of Corsica lawyer

Three men suspected in the 2012 killing of Antoine Sollacaro, a top lawyer in Corsica, were behind bars on Friday as part of a French police probe that has netted 11 arrests, prosecutors said.

Published: 5 April 2013 08:28 CEST
Three charged over slaying of Corsica lawyer
A forensics team investigates the crime scene where the lawyer Antoine Sollacaro was shot dead inside his car in October 2012. Photo: Pascal Pochard Casabianca/AFP

The trio are described as in their forties with previous convictions. They were arrested on Saturday in Paris and the Corsican city of Ajaccio.

Jacques Dallest, the prosecutor in Marseille, said in a statement that Andre Bacchiolelli and Mickael Ettori were charged with murder and receipt of stolen goods in an organised gang, while Pascal Porri was charged with criminal conspiracy to commit murder and receipt of stolen goods in an organised gang.

French Interior Minister Manuel Valls praised the authorities after the suspects were charged, denouncing what he called "a core of criminals from Ajaccio that are particularly dangerous."

Interview: 'Some bad people in Corsica want to kill me, because they cannot corrupt me'

Among the others who have been arrested since March 27 in the investigation, one has been released without charge and three others have become cooperating witnesses.

Sollacaro was the most high-profile victim of a spate of killings that has been linked to feuds between rival criminal gangs with connections to sections of the Corsican nationalist movement.

He died in an execution-style hit at a petrol station in Ajaccio on October 16 last year. He was one of at least 25 victims of unexplained murders on the island since the start of last year.

A former chairman of the Corsican bar, the 63-year-old Sollacaro was best known for having defended Yvan Colonna, the nationalist currently serving a life sentence for the 1998 assassination of France's top official on the island, the prefect Claude Erignac.

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

POLICE

French government to rewrite controversial Article 24 of security bill

French MPs will completely rewrite the contentious Article 24 of the security bill that restricts the publication of images of police, which caused thousands to take to the streets in protest across France this weekend.

Published: 30 November 2020 16:20 CET
French government to rewrite controversial Article 24 of security bill
Christophe Castaner, former French interior minister and current parliamentary president of the ruling party La République en Marche, speaks to journalists on November 30th. Photo: AFP

“We propose a complete rewriting of Article 24,” said Christophe Castaner, Parliamentary President of the ruling party La République en Marche and former interior minister.

Castaner, who held a press conference on Monday afternoon after President Emmanuel Macron summoned ministers to an emergency summit, said the government had “taken note” of the public opinion’s “incomprehension” of the text in question.

READ ALSO Aujourd'hui: What's happening in France on Monday 

France's controversial security law proposal – which was passed in the lower house of parliament last week but still faces legislative hurdles – has caused uproar across the country and saw hundreds of thousands protesters take to the streets in several French cities on Saturday.

Article 24, the most controversial part of the text, would criminalise publishing (either by journalists or on social media) images of on-duty police, if there is manifest intent to harm their “physical or psychological integrity”.

Journalists groups and international NGOs say the vague wording of the Article is open to abuse.

“The misunderstandings raised by Article 24 require that we take the time to discuss this point again,” Castaner said, as he refuted critics' claims that the bill would limit press freedom by making it more difficult to film police.

“As legislators, we must be the guarantors of fundamental rights and freedoms, first and foremost, of course, freedom of expression and freedom of the press,” Castaner said.

“Article 24 is pursuing two objectives, one of them being to better protect police officers. . .The other objective of article 24 is to preserve press freedom, whether it concerns journalists. . . or citizens.”

But several rights organisations have called for the government to withdraw the article in question, a call that gained strength after a French media published a video of three police officers beating up a music producer in Paris last week. This came shortly after police violently cleared a migrant camp set up in protest at Place de la République, in the heart of Paris.

Macron called cabinet ministers and parliamentary leaders to a crisis meeting on Monday to rapidly produce “suggestions to re-establish confidence” between the police and the population.

The rewriting will be done by the three majority groups in the French parliament – LREM, MoDem and Agir.

SHOW COMMENTS