Corsica

Could the Corsica revolts spread all over France?

The Colonnas in Corsica are a bit like the Smiths in Britain. We are numerous. But in smart Parisian circles, the mention of this name sends a chill through the room. Yvan Colonna, a member of my extended clan (though not a known relative), was the most notorious Corsican nationalist of his time. He was convicted of the 1998 killing of a Préfét of Corsica, the highest republican official on the island. Last month, Yvan was himself murdered in a mainland French prison.  He was attacked by a fellow prisoner, an Islamist who had been arrested and brought over from Afghanistan. It was an especially gruesome affair. Colonna was beaten and then strangled

Will Macron surrender to the mob?

It has been a torrid few days in France. In the early hours of Saturday morning, a former Argentine rugby international, Federico Aramburú, was shot dead on a chic Paris street after an altercation in a bar. The suspect is a notorious far-right activist who allegedly told Aramburú that he didn’t belong in France. On Monday Corsican nationalist Yvan Colonna died, three weeks after he was beaten into a coma by fellow prisoner and infamous extremist, Franck Elong Abé, an Islamist who was captured fighting for the Taliban a decade ago. It is alleged that Abé justified his attack on the grounds that Colonna ‘had bad-mouthed the Prophet’. Even among battle-hardened Jihadists, Abé was