A Corsican man has died in custody, his prison attack sparked protests on a French Mediterranean island.
Yvan Colonna, 61, who was struggling to kill a local official, was beaten by another Cameroonian jihadist prisoner on March 2.
The attack left Colonna unconscious and was being treated in a hospital in the south of France.
The attack sparked riots in Corsica, where many saw him as a hero in the French liberation struggle.
Colonna was arrested 20 years ago for shooting dead a Corsica chief in 1998, following a five-year search operation that eventually found him in the mountains living as a shepherd.
According to prosecutors, he was training in a prison gym when Franck Elong Abé, 35, a former jihadist man arrested on terrorism charges, allegedly started the attack.
Abé tried to suffocate Colonna with a bag of trash after hearing her “insult” and mock the prophet Muhammad, investigators said.
Colonna’s attack – and the failure of the prison authorities to control it – provoked an outrage on the island, sparking its massive and violent protests for decades.
Thousands of protesters lined the streets, chanting “Liberta” (freedom) and “Statu Francese assassinu” (assassin of the French state). Some were robbed of stones and petrol bombs by police.
In one night a riot broke out in Corsica’s second-largest city, Bastia, killing at least 67 people, 44 of them police.
The island – famous for being the birthplace of Napoleon Bonaparte – has been a French expedition since the 18th century. But its latest backlash has been marked by divisive violence.
Recent unrest has prompted the French government to suggest that the island be relaxed.
French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said Paris could give Corsica “independence”, while President Emmanuel Macron acknowledged that the idea was “no longer a theory”.