Paris  - After a tumultuous seven-week trial, a Paris appeals court late Friday sentenced a Corsican shepherd, Yvan Colonna, to life in prison for the 1998 murder of the prefect of that Mediterranean island.

The sentence therefore upheld the judgment delivered in the first trial, in 2007, that the 48-year-old Colonna was the man who fired three bullets into the head and neck of the prefect, Claude Erignac, in a street in the city of Ajaccio on February 6, 1998.

The verdict was handed down in the absence of Colonna and his lawyers, who chose to boycott the last two weeks of the proceedings after their request for an on-site reconstitution of the crime was rejected.

Colonna's attorneys have criticized the behaviour of the head magistrate as prejudicial against their client, and said the appeals trial was a "mockery" of justice.

In one way, the new sentence is harsher than the one handed down in the first trial. Now Colonna cannot request a parole for 22 years. The prior sentence did not include that prohibition. (dpa)