Former Corsican nationalist leader and football club executive Alain Orsoni was
killed while attending a family member’s funeral on Monday, France’s
anti-organized crime prosecutor, who is overseeing the investigation, said in a
statement.
Prosecutors are investigating the incident as a possible murder, the statement
read. No arrests have been made as of Tuesday.
Local prosecutor Nicolas Septe told reporters little information was immediately
available, apart from the fact that Orsoni had been shot from a distance at his
mother’s funeral and died shortly afterward. Orsoni led several political
movements in favor of Corsica’s independence in the 1980s and 1990s and was
elected to regional office — before leaving the French Mediterranean island for
South America in 1996.
Orsoni’s brother Guy was killed in 1983 by a Corsican gang. His son, also named
Guy, was sentenced to 13 years in prison last year for the attempted murder of
convicted Corsican gang member Pascal Porri.
Orsoni returned to Corsica in 2008 to head the then-professional local football
club AC Ajaccio — the club has now fallen to the lower, amateur levels of French
football — and survived a first assassination attempt shortly after taking up
the role.
This is the first time the anti-organized crime prosecutor’s office, which began
operations last week, has taken charge of a case. The office was set up by
legislation passed last year to strengthen France’s response to a surge in
killings tied to drug trafficking.