Prominent Corsican nationalist Francois Santoni was shot dead by a gunman early today at a wedding party in the south of the French-ruled Mediterranean island, police said.
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Corsican nationalist Francois Santoni shot dead by a gunman earlier today
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Police said a gunman opened fire with an automatic weapon at around 1 a.m. local time (midnight Irish time) in the village of Monaccia d'Aullene shooting Mr Santoni in the head and wounding one of his bodyguards in the leg.
The gunman had escaped but a burnt out car, believed to be the getaway vehicle, was later found on a small road on the island, police said. Mr Santoni, 41, was one of Corsica's best-known separatists in his former role as general secretary of Cuncolta Naziunalista, the legal political party of outlawed guerrilla group Corsican National Liberation Front (FLNC) Historic Wing.
But he had taken a step back from political activism in recent years and along with JeanMichel Rossi, a FLNC founder, had even accused former associates of drug and arms-trafficking in a book recounting the more than 20-year struggle to win autonomy for Corsica from Paris.
Since Mr Rossi was killed in a hail of bullets in a Corsican bar last year, Mr Santoni had known that he was a target for revenge killing by nationalists and while admitting he had blood on his hands he had continued to openly denounce violence.
Many of the bombings and occasional killings on the island, between the French and Italian coasts, are attributed not to anti-Paris politics but to Mafia-style racketeering or turf wars among a multitude of small and violent separatist groups.
The murder of Paris's top representative Claude Erignac, shot dead in the street in 1998, prompted French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin to offer Corsica an unprecedented degree of autonomy in a drive to end 20 years of separatist violence.
Mr Santoni, who had spent four years in prison in the 1980s for his involvement in a number of guerrilla attacks on the island, had played an integral role in negotiations between the FLNC and Paris over the last decade.
In 1995, he survived an assassination attempt although his bodyguard was killed.
Mr Santoni was arrested again in 1996 and spent two years in prison awaiting trial on charges of attempted extortion. He was found guilty last year and was appealing the decision. From his prison cell in October 1998, he told a newspaper that he disagreed with separatists' threats to launch an all-out campaign against central French authorities to secure independence.
Last year, he wrote a book revealing details about the murder of Mr Erignac, Mr Rossi and fellow separatist leader Jean-Claude Fratacci who was killed alongside Mr Rossi in the submachinegun raid.