Former Corsican separatist leader Alain Orsoni was shot dead today during his mother's funeral in Vero, a village 30 kilometers east of Ajaccio, the capital of the French Mediterranean island, the city's public prosecutor said.
"He was shot from a long distance," prosecutor Nikola Sept told Reuters. Local police confirmed the assassination.
Orsoni, 71, led a separatist movement called the Corsican Movement for Self-Determination, which French police considered a legal front for an armed group – the Corsican National Liberation Front – the traditional wing.
Authorities have linked the Corsican National Liberation Front - the traditional wing - to a series of attacks on the island during the 1990s, some of which the group claimed responsibility for.
Orsoni was also charged, convicted and later pardoned in connection with the 1980 automatic weapons attack on the Iranian embassy in Paris.
Orsoni was also president of Corsican football club AC Ajaccio in the late 2000s and early 2010s.
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