(Caen) The hunt for the perpetrators of a bloody assault on a prison van in France continues on Wednesday, the day after this attack which shocked the country, cost the lives of two agents and allowed the escape of an inmate, also actively sought after.
The attack, spectacular and extremely rare in France, was carried out late Tuesday morning by a commando who launched a ramming car against a van at the Incarville toll booth (north-west) before opening fire at the automatic weapon against its occupants.
Two officers died and three others seriously injured. The detainee, who was transported to his remand center in Evreux (north-west) after a hearing at the Rouen judicial court, was able to flee with his accomplices.
“We have put a lot of resources into finding not only the person who escaped (and) the gang who released him in despicable conditions,” Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said on RTL radio.
The attack, described as a “shock” by French President Emmanuel Macron, raised a wave of emotion among prison guards who launched blocking actions on Wednesday morning in front of several penitentiary establishments to demand more resources.
PHOTO PASCAL GUYOT, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Prison officers observe a minute of silence during a demonstration in Béziers, southern France.
Faced with the commando, the agents only had “a simple Sig Sauer against weapons of war”, accused Frédéric Liakhoff, head of the FO-Justice union at the Caen penitentiary center (north-west).
The unions, who will be received in the afternoon at the Ministry of Justice, are demanding in particular “the drastic reduction of extractions by favoring the use of videoconferencing of magistrates or their trips to establishments”, “an overhaul and harmonization of the levels escort.
Denouncing a “despicable crime”, Minister of Justice Eric Dupond-Moretti calls for a minute of silence in all jurisdictions on Wednesday and met the day before with the colleagues of the killed agents. “For some of them they had worked together for twenty years, naturally they are devastated,” declared the minister.
This is the first time since 1992 that a prison officer has been killed in the exercise of his duties in France.
“Considerable resources”
Since Tuesday, the police have launched a vast hunt to try to find the fugitive and the members of the commando.
On Tuesday, “more than 450 police officers and gendarmes” were mobilized “just for the department of Eure”, indicated Mr. Darmanin, also mentioning means of “international cooperation”. There are “a lot of legal traces that will allow us to do this identification work,” he said.
Denouncing “barbarity”, the minister also called for a “trial of this savagery which affects our society”, pointing the finger at “narcobanditism”.
The detainee on the run, Mohamed Amra, 30, has already been convicted thirteen times but “none to date for violations of drug legislation,” Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said on Tuesday evening.
The latest conviction dates back to May 7, by the Evreux court (north-west) “for a burglary” which earned him 18 months in prison. He was also in pre-trial detention for other cases, including an indictment in the Marseille region (south-east), a hotbed of narco-banditry in France, for complicity in assassination by an organized gang, kidnapping and sequestration.
During his short detention in Evreux, where he was transferred in April to be tried, the bars of his cell had started to be sawed, according to the magistrate.
“It’s quite incomprehensible, I can’t imagine that this boy could be involved” in the commando attack, responded Mr. Amra’s lawyer, Hugues Vigier.
This operation “does not correspond to the profile that I had perceived of him, if he is involved it is because I was truly wrong about his functioning and what he was capable of,” he added.