Fronte di Liberazione Naziunale di a Corsica (FLNC) -- Rival

Armata Corsa is the main rival of the Front de Liberation Nationale de la Corse (FLNC), the largest and oldest terrorist organization in Corsica.  Suspected leaders Francois Santoni and Jean-Michel Rossi left the group in 1998 out of discontent with the radicalization of the party.  Armata Corsa claims it is more purely "nationalist" than other Corsican groups known to have links to organized crime on the island.  The group first claimed responsibility for five coordinated bomb attacks across the island, all directed at Departmental Amenities Directorate (DDE) buildings.  Buildings in Ajaccio, Sartene, Porto-Vecchio, Corte and Calvi were damaged and another device was found two days later, unexploded at a DDE facility in Bastia.  In claiming responsibility for the attacks, the group said that "the DDE participates directly in ruthless property speculation against Corsicans."  Two months later, the group claimed responsibility for an explosion at an Italian-owned hotel in Bonifacio which destroyed the main part of the building.  This attack was in keeping with the modus operandi of other nationalist groups which often target foreign-owned businesses on the island.

The primary goals of Armata Corsa include an independent Corsica, the transfer of imprisoned Corsican terrorists from Continental France to a prison in Corsica, and the eradication of organized crime (and nationalist group relationships with organized crime) in Corsica.

The Armata di Liberazione Naziunale (ALN) is a Corsican separatist group which conducted a single attack in August of 2002 but is now presumed to be inactive.  The group appears to have been born out of opposition to the so-called "Matignon agreements," a plan for limited autonomy in Corsica proposed by French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin.  In an official statement made after a grenade attack on the gendarme building in Southern Corsica, the ALN demanded that Corsicans be given "total sovereignty on the ground of Corsica."  The document went on to state that "we [the ALN] will not accept that, after so many years of fights and sacrifices, our ground becomes a simple laboratory of French decentralization."  Those "years of fights and sacrifices" to which the ALN referred began in the 1970"s, when Corsican separatists, particularly the high-profile National Liberation Front of Corsica (FLNC), began to use terrorism as means of promoting their agenda.  Smaller terrorist groups have proliferated in recent years, as the FLNC has splintered and the government in Paris has offered limited autonomy for the island.  <P> Corsican separatists argue that Corsicans are an ethno-cultural group distinct from the French and are thus deserving of their own country.  To support their argument, Corsican separatists point to the unique language (basically a mix of French and Italian) and culture of their people, as well as the 14 years of independence the island enjoyed between gaining independence from the Italian city-state of Genoa (1755) and its annexation by France (1769).  Recent waves of immigration from North Africa have led to a racist backlash from the Corsican separatists, causing some outbreaks of street violence and calls for preferential treatment of island natives in the job market.  Many are also angered by the profits being made by (mostly French) "outsiders" from Corsica's tourist industry.