Visit our website: HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --------------------------------------------- [Of course one would be branded a conspiracy theorist to suggest French intelligence might have played a role in this incident. As an illustrative exercise, compare the derogatory portrait painted of the Corsican independence leader - separatist is a misnomer, as Corsica is not part of mainland France and is in fact a conquered province - down to the utterly gratuitous detail of his baldness, with how CIA assets like Ali Ahmeti and Hashim Thaci are described, and then draw your own conclusions about the veracity of Western reporting both in the Balkans and in Western Europe.] Friday August 17 8:35 AM ET Corsican Nationalist Leader Gunned Down MONACIA D'AULLENE, Corsica (Reuters) - Prominent Corsican nationalist Francois Santoni was shot dead early on Friday as he left a wedding reception on the French-ruled Mediterranean island, police said. Police said a gunman had opened fire with an automatic weapon at around 1 a.m. in the village of Monacia d'Aullene in the south of Corsica, shooting Santoni in the head and chest and killing him instantly. ``He ran into an ambush,�� said Jacques Dallest, the government attorney general in the Corsican capital Ajaccio. The gunman fled the scene of the attack, in which the groom was wounded in the leg. A burned-out car, believed to have been the getaway vehicle, was later found on a isolated road. Santoni, 41, was one of Corsica's best-known separatists in his former role as general secretary of Cuncolta Naziunalista, the legal political party affiliated to the outlawed guerrilla group Corsican National Liberation Front (FLNC) Historic Wing. His murder comes almost a year to the day after the assassination of his close friend Jean-Michel Rossi, a founder of the FLNC, who together with Santoni had denounced the tactics of hardline nationalists. The two men 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. French Interior Minister Daniel Vaillant vigorously condemned the attack, saying the culprits must be hunted ''without respite.'' So far, nobody has claimed responsibility for the killing. ``The only path for Corsica is to pursue with the utmost determination and to succeed in the peace process launched by the government, based on democratic dialogue, on the primacy of political debate and on the end of violence,�� he said in a statement. Senior left-wing politician Jean-Pierre Chevenement, who quit as interior minister last year over Prime Minister Lionel Jospin's push to grant Corsica more regional power, said Santoni's murder proved the government had been wrong. ``There is absolutely no reason for these people to give up the blackmail which has served them so well until now,�� Chevenement told RMC radio, referring to nationalist guerrillas. ``It is clear that these agreements, which set the stage for a renewal in violence, cannot lead to this lasting peace.�� ASSASSINATION TARGET Witnesses said the bald Santoni, who was nicknamed The Iguana, had been leaving the wedding with his partner Christelle and his parents at the time of the attack. Police said Santoni's bodyguards did not have time to return fire. The groom, Jean-Pierre Tomasi, was recovering in hospital in Porto-Vecchio. Since Rossi was killed in a hail of bullets in a Corsican bar last year, Santoni had known that he was a target for revenge killing by nationalists. 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 to the island, Claude Erignac, shot dead in the street in 1998, prompted Jospin to offer Corsica an unprecedented degree of autonomy in a drive to end 20 years of separatist violence. Santoni, who spent four years in prison in the 1980s for his involvement in a number of guerrilla attacks on the island, played an integral role in negotiations between the FLNC and Paris over the last decade. In 1995, he survived an assassination attempt in which one of his bodyguards was killed. 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 against the decision. >From his prison cell in 1998, he told a newspaper that he disagreed with separatists' threats to launch an all-out campaign against central French authorities to win independence. Last year, he wrote a book revealing details about the murder of Erignac, Rossi and his long-time associate Jean-Claude Fratacci, who was gunned down alongside Rossi. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Make international calls for as low as $.04/minute with Yahoo! Messenger http://phonecard.yahoo.com/ ------------------------------------------------- This Discussion List is the follow-up for the old stopnato @listbot.com that has been shut down ==^================================================================ EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9spWA Or send an email To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] This email was sent to: [email protected] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================
