This week Bernard Bonnet, formerly France's senior representative in the troubled island of Corsica, walked past jeering onlookers to face trial in Ajaccio, the island's capital. His crime? In early 1999, as Corsica's prefect (in effect its governor), he had allegedly authorised five gendarmes to burn down two restaurants illegally built on the island's beaches. The hamfisted gendarmes left behind not just separatist propaganda (to pin the blame on Corsica's gangster-ridden independence movement) but also petrol cans and a radio that belonged to the gendarmerie.
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