On 17 August 2001, Corsican guerrilla leader and head of the extremist Armata Corsa organisation François Santoni was shot 13 times while attending the marriage of a family friend.

The attack was done after Santoni began accusing members of the National Liberation Front of Corsica-Canal Historique (FLNC-Canale Storicu, FLNC-CS), an organisation he resigned from co-leading three years before, of conspiring with the mafia.

However, evidence began to surface revealing the assassination to be an attack from the Brise de Mer mafia, a group he had been in a feud with due to his staunch anti-mafia positions.

Despite the constant guerrilla warfare already present in Corsica, Armata Corsa's streak of kidnappings, assassinations, and racist attacks gave the organization the label “terrorist” both inside and outside of nationalist circles.

Santoni's war with rival nationalist guerrillas and the feud with the mafia caused him to become increasingly paranoid, oftentimes stating to friends and news reporters that he knows of plots to kill him and that he is prepared to either die or avoid death.

[6] On the night between 16 and 17 August 2001, François Santoni attended the wedding of a family friend, Jean-René Tomasi, in Monacia-d'Aullène, the town of his birth.

A link was made to Jean-Guy Talamoni, already being investigated for the assassination of Armata Corsa’s second-in-command and Santoni's close friend, Jean-Michel Rossi.

[9] A weapons cache found around the Paris area in October caused police to suspect that Belgian hitmen were hired by nationalists to assassinate Santoni, but these incidents were likely not connected.