In Napoleon's birthplace, riven by feuds between bandits and nationalists, a brilliant lawyer's murder brings deep pessimism
Even by Corsican standards of cold-bloodedness, the assassination of Antoine Sollacaro was shocking.
Not because it was especially brutal on an island where a father was recently gunned down in front of his young children and a woman was shot eight times in the back outside a shopping centre last year. Not even because it was that unusual; Sollacaro's murder was the 16th this year in Corsica. Hours before he was killed, another body had been found in a car up one of the island's many mountains.
Sollacaro's murder was shocking because he was a lawyer, recognised as a brilliant advocate and a man who defended Corsican nationalists, traditionally associated with such violence. "I'd have been more surprised if the priest was shot in his church," one lawyer said after the killing. "To shoot a lawyer, this is very symbolic."
Marc Maroselli, the president of the bar, described the murder as intolerable. "It is cowardly and shows the slide into deadly madness that is covering Corsica in blood," he said.
Islanders living with the daily drip-drip of violence believed Sollacaro's profession was his protection, that it conferred some kind of guarantee in the Corsican underworld's code of conduct. Except that on Wednesday morning it didn't.
Sollacaro, 63, was driving to work in his black convertible Porsche when he decided to pop into a Total petrol station just outside the Corsican capital, Ajaccio, to buy his morning newspaper. His vehicle was still moving when a BMW motorcycle came alongside. The pillion rider drew an automatic pistol and fired at least five shots into the lawyer's head and several more into his body. As the car hit a wall with Sollacaro slumped dead over the wheel, the assassin sped off.
Murderous violence is nothing new in Corsica. The Ile de Beauté, famed for its mountains, pine groves and sandy beaches, has a heart of darkness and a history of collective and individual slaughter. The island has been a battleground since the first century BC with Carthaginians, followed by Greeks, Etruscans, Romans, Vandals, Visigoths, Saracens and other invaders spilling blood over this extraordinarily lush and beautiful rock in the Mediterranean. It was, after all, Corsica that spawned one of the ultimate international braggarts and bullies, Napoleon Bonaparte.
Between 1821 and 1852, the "vendetta" code of honour is believed to have led to 4,300 murders. In the 1950s, the crime and bloodshed was linked to the French Connection, a network of international heroin smugglers. In the 1970s, it was dominated by nationalists and organised criminals and some people who were both.
The nationalists have struggled against Paris's rule since 1768 when Corsica became French – it is one of the country's 27 administrative regions today – but the movement reached its apogee in 1998, when members killed the prefect Claude Erignac, the French government's highest representative on the island. Sollacaro famously defended the man convicted of Erignac's murder, Yvan Colonna, and a number of other leading nationalists.
Since the start of 2007, there have been around 100 killings and at least another 100 attempted murders, most blamed on disputes and tit-for-tat score-settling between mafia-like gangs of what the local people call "bandits".
Few of the killers make it to court. Most are themselves killed in revenge, creating an endless spiral of violence and bloodshed that becomes deeply personal. The French magazine L'Express said this made Corsica, with a population of just over 300,000 but where there are an estimated 30,000 weapons, the "bloodiest" region in western Europe, and more crime-ridden than Sicily.
On Friday, Sollacaro's coffin made the slow and winding 63km journey from Ajaccio south through the mountains and pine forests to his birthplace, the former fishing port of Propriano. As the bells of Notre Dame de la Miséricorde jangled and the luxury motor cruisers and yachts at the port jiggled in their moorings, up to 1,000 friends, relatives, colleagues and residents gathered outside the already packed church to pay their respects.
The lawyers donned their fur-trimmed robes and looked grim. Hard men with red eyes embraced and wept. Elegant, tanned women in stilettos fiddled with gold jewellery.
Given the autumn sun and the occasion, the dress code adopted by most mourners, dark glasses and tailored black suits, was entirely appropriate. Given the setting and circumstances, it became cinematic and vaguely ominous.
Afterwards, the mourners lined up to offer their condoléances according to local tradition: to the women of the family inside the church, the men outside. Some spoke of a "gangrene" or "cancer" on the island, but most said that it was not a time for talk. Jacques, aged 81, a retired sheep farmer, shook his weatherbeaten face but could not find many words to say.
"I don't know what's happened to Corsica, it is terrible to see what has happened to our island. Nothing will ever be the same."
He added: "In the past, murders have been over questions of honour, but now life is cheap. Where is the honour in this killing? Young people use bullets to resolve their differences, but bullets resolve nothing."
Pierre-Louis Maurel, a former president of the bar in the northern city of Bastia, said he was a lifelong personal friend of the dead man.
"Antoine was a lawyer, a defender of men," he said. "We do not know if he was targeted as a man or as a lawyer. If he was targeted for his advocate's robes, then it is very symbolic; it is nothing less than an attack on democracy, liberty and justice. It means the killers respect nobody and nothing. I hope this is not true, but I fear it is. As lawyers, that makes us very afraid."
Many Corsicans blame the French establishment for the island's plight, complaining they have been abandoned to crime, rising unemployment, poverty and economic decline, which they say has left the island's youth disaffected, dangerous and fodder for organised crime.
President François Hollande has described the violence as unacceptable and tomorrow his Socialist government is expected to announce measures to combat it.
If there is stupefaction on Corsica, there is widespread incomprehension elsewhere. "Nobody understands what's going on here and it's impossible to explain," said one French reporter at Sollacaro's funeral on Friday.
"Before, it was the nationalists fighting for independence, then it was nationalists fighting each other, and some were also bandits who started fighting each other for different reasons. Then people started getting killed, not because they were involved in anything but because they knew people who were ..." his voice trailed off. "As I say, impossible to explain."
Veteran Corsican journalist Jacques Renucci described a sense of collective resignation and pessimism. "People here are not in fact particularly shocked by the killing, sadly. What they're shocked about is that someone so high-profile was targeted," he said.
Renucci added: "Every time Corsicans say 'never again', and it happens time and time again. They hark back to a golden age on the island when everyone lived happily together, but it is a myth, a fiction.
"The truth is we have always killed each other, and I am not optimistic that we're about to stop."
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