Alain Orsoni, former nationalist leader and president of the AC Ajaccio club, was killed. Shot straight through the heart at his mother's funeral
Alain Orsoni. Credit: PASCAL POCHARD-CASABIANCA / AFP / Profimedia
Former Corsican separatist leader Alain Orsoni was shot dead on Monday during his mother's funeral in Vero, a village 30 kilometers east of Ajaccio, the capital of the French Mediterranean island, Reuters reports.
“He was hit by a bullet fired from a distance,” Ajaccio public prosecutor Nicolas Septe told Reuters.
Local police confirmed the murder.
Shot from long range
According to French media, the former nationalist leader was shot dead while attending his mother's funeral in the Corsican village of Vero.
He was hit by a single gunshot, which hit him directly in the heart. The bullet was fired from hundreds of meters away, writes Le Parisien.
At the time of the crime, there were approximately 50 people in the cemetery.
He led a separatist movement in Corsica
Alain Orsoni, 71, led a separatist movement called the Corsican Movement for Self-Determination, which French police considered the legal front of the armed group the National Front for the Liberation of Corsica – Traditional Wing.
Authorities have linked the National Front for the Liberation of Corsica – Traditional Wing to a series of attacks on the island in the 1990s, some of which the group claimed.
Orsoni was also charged, convicted and later pardoned in connection with a machine gun attack on the Iranian embassy in Paris in 1980, Reuters notes.
The man who brought Mutu to Ajaccio
Alain Orsoni was also the president of the Corsican football club AC Ajaccio.
Orsoni led the club in two periods, 2008-2015 and 2022-2023, he being the man who brought Adrian Mutu to the team in 2012, after the Romanian striker had left Cesena, reports GOLAZO.ro.
Mutu played at AC Ajaccio for 2 years, between 2012 and 2014.
