Death of prison officers during the escape of “The Fly”: emotion, anger and the manhunt

Le commando a attaqué le fourgon pénitentiaire à l’arme lourde, mardi, au péage d’Incarville. MAXPPP – LP/Olivier Arandel

The Prime Minister promised to find the commando who killed two people and injured three others on Tuesday. A call to block prisons was launched this Wednesday in France.

"Our country is in mourning." With a serious face, the Minister of Justice, Éric Dupond-Moretti, reacted on Tuesday with emotion to the announcement of the death of two prison officers, during the attack on a prisoner transport van, shortly after 11 am. h, at the Incarville tollbooth, on the A13, in Val-de-Reuil (Eure).

Three other agents were injured during this escape by detainee Mohamed Amra. For two of them, the prognosis was in jeopardy on Tuesday.

Victims: bereaved families

Éric Dupond-Moretti paid tribute, Tuesday, to the two agents killed, an officer and a guard from the judicial extractions attachment center (PREJ) of Caen, respectively born in 1972 and 1989. "One of them leaves behind a wife and two children who were to celebrate their 21st birthday in two days", explainedé the Keeper of the Seals. "The other leaves behind a five-month pregnant woman, parents and of course friends." The three injured officers are 48 years old, 52 years old and 55 years old. The Minister of Justice went to &agrav; meeting staff from the Caen prison administration.

"The last deaths in the prison administration date back to 1992, said Éric Dupond-Moretti. Everything, I mean everything, absolutely everything, will be done to find the perpetrators of this despicable crime. These are people for whom life weighs nothing. They will be arrested, judged and punished commensurate with the crime they committed."

"Intractable"

"We will be intractable", warns Emmanuel Macron.

The Épervier plan was launched on Tuesday, then lifted, but several hundred gendarmes and police officers, supported by the GIGN, are still engaged in a manhunt to try to find the attackers and the prisoner.< /p>

Fugitives who did not hesitate to attack the prison convoy with heavy weapons, during the return from the judicial extraction of Mohamed Amra from the Rouen judicial court to the Évreux remand center.

Prison escorts: 130,000 missions per year

Prison officers from the judicial extractions center (PREJ), targeted by criminals, are responsible for escorting detainees on public roads . They are armed and equipped with bulletproof vests. 1 101 PREJ agents carried out  thus more than 130,000 missions in 2023, sometimes with the reinforcement of police officers or gendarmes. This was not the case on Wednesday. Mohamed Amra was not, in fact, listed in the directory of particularly notable detainees (DPS). The escort level is defined by the Escort Authority. regulation and programming of judicial extractions. Here he was level 3 out of 4.

"An ambush", underlines Alex Ronde, spokesperson for the CFTC Police Union. The criminals, well informed, arrived in several vehicles, one of which rushed into the prison van, just after passing the toll booth, to stop it.

Fire from the escort

On a video surveillance image, we see men dressed in black, equipped with long weapons, fan out around the van and open fire.

"I’heard lots of gunshots, big booms too", explains the passenger of& ;rsquo;a bus, quoted by Le Parisien.

Among the five prison officers of the escort, some were then able "to use their weapon" , said Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau on Tuesday evening during a press conference.

“La Mouche”, the most wanted man in France

Nicknamed “The Fly”, Mohamed Amra, now the most wanted man in the world from France, is a 30-year-old drug trafficker, originally from Rouen, convicted of already &agrav; 13 times, notably for theft, violence with the use of a weapon, criminal conspiracy or even extortion. He is indicted for attempted homicide by an organized gang and kidnapping and sequestration leading to murder. the death of a young drug dealer. According to Le Parisien, investigators also suspect him of having sponsored the crime. an assassination attempt, linked to narcotics, which had aimed at a Frenchman, July 12, 2023, à Marbella (Spain). A week later, two men aged 34 and 38 were arrested. murdered à Évreux, including one close to Mohamed Amra. According to a source close to the case, the detainee had tried to kill him. to saw the bars of his cell, à Éèvreux, two days before this escape. He had been placed in a disciplinary unit. "How can we take away lives like ça ?", replied ;acted, Tuesday, on RTL, his mother.

Before fleeing, the criminals tried to set the ram vehicle on fire. Two vehicles were then found burned, in Houetteville and Gauville-le-Campagne, a few kilometers south of the toll, on the road to Évreux.

"The Republic has been attacked"

The investigation was entrusted to the national jurisdiction responsible for the fight against organized crime. "The determination of the magistrates and investigators is and will be equal to this outburst of violence", warned the magistrate on Tuesday evening, specifying that the fugitive risks life imprisonment .

Multiple reactions in the political class

LR Éric Ciotti pointed out "the terrifying deterioration of security conditions".
LFI "No public service agent should die in the line of duty", lamented Mathilde Panot.
RN "It’is a real savagery that falls on France every day& quot;, said Jordan Bardella.

"It’It was the Republic that was attacked", insisted Prime Minister GabrielAttal, at the National Assembly, where a minute of silence was observed.

"We will hunt them down. We will find them. And I tell you, they will pay, he promised, while a movement of anger is spreading in the prison administration, with a call for blockade of prisons this Wednesday in France.

“Dead prisons” day and minute of silence

Prison officers' unions are calling for a day of “dead prisons”, this Wednesday, with the blocking of all penitentiary establishments and structures. The inter-syndicale, cited by TF1, requests, in particular, "a drastic reduction in extractions by promoting the use of videoconferencing ;reference of magistrates or their travel to établishments", "an overhaul and harmonization of escort levels", or even "the end of variegated escorts and at least " three agents". The unions will be received this Wednesday, à 2 p.m., by the Minister of Justice. He asks that a minute of silence be respected, before that, at 11 a.m., in courts and prisons.