Former Corsican separatist leader Alain Orsoni, 71, was shot dead during his mother’s funeral in Vero, near Ajaccio, on Monday.

Prosecutors said he was killed by a long-range shot, and an investigation into murder by an organised gang has been opened.

Orsoni led the Corsican Movement for Self-Determination, considered by French authorities as the political wing of the armed Corsican National Liberation Front-Traditional Wing.

He had previously been charged and later pardoned for a 1980 machine gun attack on the Iranian embassy in Paris, France 24 has reported.

Orsoni also served as president of the Corsican football club AC Ajaccio in the late 2000s and early 2010s.