The supervisors, some in uniform, burned pallets and tires in front of the entrance to this central house, AFP journalists noted. Banners with the names of the unions behind the protest – Ufap Unsa Justice, CGT, FO – were hung at the entrance to the prison.
The blockage which had started around 6 a.m. ended at the end of the morning after the intervention of the police, according to the police headquarters.
“We are here in support of our unjustly accused colleague, the responsibilities are at all levels but certainly not at the bottom of the ladder. It is unacceptable to find a scapegoat to cover up the errors of the administration”, has denounced to AFP Thomas Forner, Ufap delegate from Arles, who participated in the rally.
“He is a guard who has more than thirty years of career. Anyone would have acted like him in his place”, approved Eddino Wojak, FO delegate of the prison.
“For political reasons, we want a head to fall. But there is no question of our colleague serving as a fuse,” assured CGT delegate Ahmed Kakbi.
Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne announced last Thursday “the initiation of disciplinary proceedings” against the former director of the prison and a supervisor, after the submission of a report on Yvan’s fatal attack. Colonna, who concluded that there were “failures” on their part.
“We made a charge report, the light was not shed,” continued Mr. Forner, asking for the lifting of the sanctions against the supervisor pointed out.
On March 2, Yvan Colonna was violently attacked in the sports hall of the central house by Franck Elong Abé, a 36-year-old man who was serving several sentences, including one of nine years for “terrorist criminal association”. He died of his injuries after three weeks in a coma.
The supervisor in charge of the wing where the Corsican separatist was located, who was serving a life sentence for the assassination of the prefect Claude Erignac, showed a “clear lack of vigilance” by remaining “without any reason away” from the place of the facts, which lasted nine minutes, concluded the report of the General Inspectorate of Justice (IGJ).
At Arles prison, “there is a ground floor with two wings, he could not be in the oven and at the mill. He was in his sector, not gone for a walk”, Thomas Forner argued on Tuesday.
“In Arles, we welcome all audiences. You open a door and you are faced with a terrorist prisoner, another, you have a common law prisoner, a third, a prisoner with psychiatric problems, the next door a radicalized. We do not have the means to manage all these profiles”, he added, addressing the Keeper of the Seals.
“Mr. Minister, it is time to realize that the supervisors are professionals who act to the best of their abilities but that the means are not there”.
“A report that is slow to come out, questions still unanswered (…) and then inevitably the fuse,” tweeted Christine Colonna, Yvan’s sister, on Thursday.
