Corsican Football Club Chief Arrested for Extortion

The president of the French first division football club Bastia was in jail last night amid evidence that the emblematic Corsican side had become a front for the island's separatist movement.

François Nicolai, 53, who has run Sporting Club de Bastia since 1993, was being held on suspicion of extortion after one of the club's main sponsors told police he had signed a £300,000-a-year deal to halt a nationalist bombing campaign against his company.

Jacques Maillot, of the tour operator Nouvelles Frontières, told the investigating magistrate, Philippe Courroye, that the six explosions at company agencies in Paris, Ajaccio, Bastia and Marseille stopped as soon as he "signed the contract". Responsibility for the attacks, in the 1990s, had been claimed by the Corsican Liberation Front.

Another leading French holiday firm, Club Mediterranee, has made similar allegations, prompting Mr Courroye to start an inquiry into "extortion relating to a terrorist enterprise". Under French anti-terrorist legislation Mr Nicolai can be held for several days.

The Mediterranean island has been plagued for the past 28 years by almost daily bombings, machine gunnings and other symbolic attacks by a small nationalist movement. Less than 10% of the island's 260,000 population wants full independence from France, but few dare openly oppose the warring separatist groups, many of which are little more than fratricidal gangs which have killed more than 100 of their own members in the 9,000-odd attacks since 1975.

Bastia football club has long been Corsica's favourite emblem of sporting resistance to the mainland: its moments of glory came when it reached the Uefa cup final in 1978 and won the French Cup in 1982. Police now suspect its importance to the separatist movement is more than symbolic.

Mr Nicolai's brother Jean, the club treasurer, for years edited U Ribombu, the official magazine of the liberation front's political wing, known as A Cuncolta. Investigators are also looking into the loss of hundreds of thousands of pounds from player transfer deals, which allegedly ended up in the pocket of Charles Pieri, another leading seperatist active in club affairs.

Events have yet to reach the pitch of the early 1990s when the club was rocked by several apparently separatist inspired murders. In December 1993, Pierre Biaconi, Bastia's captain and a dissident nationalist, disappeared. The following year, Bastia's nationalist president, Jean-François Filippi, was found shot dead just nine days before he was due to stand trial for criminal negligence after the 1992 collapse of a stand at the club's Furiani stadium which killed 18 people.