[Saba Sports News] According to French media reports, former Ajaccio president Alain Orsoni was shot dead at his mother’s funeral, at the age of 71. It is reported that Orsoni was hit by a long-range shot during the ceremony. The former political and football leader was shot three times in front of 50 witnesses at the funeral and died on the spot. The prosecutor’s office is investigating Orsoni’s murder as an organized gang operation.
Orsoni was not just a former president of a football club; he was also a former leader of the Corsican National Liberation Front and had been in exile for many years in Spain and Latin America. After leading Ajaccio for a decade, he stepped down from the presidency in 2025 due to the club’s financial crisis. Orsoni’s life was always overshadowed by violence. In 2008, he survived an assassination attempt; in 1983, his brother, Guy Orsoni, one of Corsica’s most wanted criminals, was killed in an attack allegedly linked to the Corsican mafia.
Authorities have connected Orsoni’s nationalist political activities to a series of attacks that occurred in Corsica in the 1990s. Additionally, he was previously accused and convicted in connection with the 1980 Paris Iranian embassy machine-gun attack but was later granted a pardon.