from Rouen to Marseille, the itinerary of Mohamed Amra, the repeat offender wanted by Interpol

This 30-year-old man, convicted 13 times, has been on the run since the violent attack on the van which was transporting him and during which two prison officers died. Interpol issued a red notice against him on Wednesday.

He is nicknamed “The Fly”. Mohamed Amra, the inmate who escaped late Tuesday morning during the fatal attack on a prison van at the Incarville tollbooth in Eure, is still actively sought. Wednesday May 15, Interpol issued a red notice against him. The wanted notice is sent to the 196 member countries of the international criminal police organization, in order to more easily make an arrest abroad, before possible extradition. The notice also makes it possible to specify the physical description of the fugitive: approximately 1.80 m, eyes “dark brown”, hair “chestnuts” And “wavy” and beard.

Born on March 10, 1994 in Rouen (Seine-Maritime), this repeat offender received his first conviction in October 2009, when he was only 15 years old. Yacine Arab, founder of the Espoirs Jeunes association, knew him at that age. He has it “seen pick up” in his school career and described to France Télévisions “a hyperactive kid.” Since then, Mohamed Amra’s criminal record has grown quite a bit and, to date, has accumulated thirteen convictions, most of which were handed down by the Evreux judicial court and the Rouen court of appeal. They “concern crimes against property, in particular aggravated burglary”specified the Paris public prosecutor, during a press conference Tuesday evening, during which Laure Beccuau confirmed that the detainee was “very well known to the courts”. In April 2020, he was sentenced to three months in prison for motorized rodeos.

Mohamed Amra had been in detention since January 7, 2022. Two days earlier, he had been sentenced to three years in prison by the Rouen Court of Appeal for numerous reasons, including break-in, criminal conspiracy with a view to committing of a crime, extortion by person hiding their face and theft by an organized gang. His last conviction dates from May 7, again by the Evreux Criminal Court, and this time to a sentence of 18 months’ imprisonment, for burglary aggravated by another circumstance. His young son and his mother came to attend the hearing, the lawyer for another defendant, tried alongside Mohamed Amra during this trial, told France Télévisions. According to her, “the penitentiary escorts allowed him to give a hug” to the little boy.

The 30-year-old was also in pre-trial detention for more serious offenses of a criminal nature. He has in fact been indicted since January 26, 2022 for attempted assassination and extortion. Facts that he is suspected of having committed in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, south of Rouen. Tuesday, at the time of the attack, he was returning from the Rouen judicial court, after being questioned by an investigating judge in the context of this case.

But Mohamed Amra was not confined to Seine-Maritime: he is also suspected of having committed crimes in Aubagne, in Bouches-du-Rhône. In this case, within the jurisdiction of the Marseille judicial court, he has been indicted since September 26, 2023 for murder in an organized gang, kidnapping and sequestration of hostages, destruction by dangerous means, participation in a criminal association with a view to commission of a crime. Thus, he was first detained at the Santé penitentiary center in Paris, at the Fleury-Mérogis remand center (Essonne), before being incarcerated in Marseille, reported the Paris prosecutor.

Associated with organized crime, Mohamed Amra was also involved in drug cases, says France 3 Normandie. However, his criminal record does not include “no conviction” linked to narcotics, underlined prosecutor Laure Beccuau.

The offender arrived at the Evreux remand center on April 11. “The site is not suitable for accommodating detainees like that because we do not have a watchtower, for example, like in Rouen. He should have been placed in Rouen before his trial in Evreux. He had to stay here until Thursday at the latest”said, Wednesday, the local representative of Ufap-Unsa Justice to Paris-Normandy. He then had to return to the Baumettes remand center in Marseille.

“When we see this man’s journey, we suspect that he will not be easy to manage. We are increasingly dealing with prisoners who have lawless profiles, sociopaths, and, on this development profiles of the prison population, we have the feeling of not having been heard”adds, in The worldthe national secretary of this union, Wilfried Fonck, who is surprised not to see Mohamed Amra classified as a particularly monitored detainee (DPS).

On BFMTV, his lawyer, Hugues Vigier, said “completely stunned.” This attack “does not correspond to the profile that I perceived of him. If he is involved, it is because I was truly wrong about his functioning and what he was capable of”, added this lawyer accustomed to organized crime cases.

However, Mohamed Amra is also presented as someone violent, although within drug trafficking, the offender has more of an intermediate position and is not part of the “high end of the spectrum”. “We suspected he was capable of anything”, summarizes a police officer, interviewed by franceinfo. With, visibly, the desire to escape at all costs: during his short detention in Evreux, Mohamed Amra “begin” to saw the bars of his cell. According to Laure Beccuau, he was to be heard very soon on these facts by local investigators.