A French detainee who fled the police after armed attackers attacked a prisoner convoy in May were apprehended in Romania, French officials announced on Saturday. His capture ended a hunt for a month for the man, whose violent escape resulted in the death of two prison guards.
French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau confirmed statement On X that Mohamed Amra, the man who was taken by two armed men in a cheeky day attack, had been placed in police custody with the cooperation of the Romanian government.
President Emmanuel Macron welcomed his capture as “a huge success” and thanked the investigators who have followed Mr. Amra “for months and months”. He added: “I think of the families of the prison personnel he had killed.”
The Paris prosecutor’s office said that the man arrested was “very likely” to be Mr. Amra and that the investigators worked to carry out the necessary checks.
Violent prison breaks are rare in France. The two prison guards were the first to be killed in the exercise of their duties in 32 years, and the case has raised uncomfortable questions on the overloaded prison system of France and if the authorities had fully grasped how extent The detainee, a violent criminal known as the fly, or the fly was.
He had been sentenced to 18 months in prison for burglary, one of the numerous convictions for crimes including extortion and assault. But he was also the subject of an investigation into more serious accusations – in Marseille, as part of an abduction and a homicide and in Rouen, in connection with an attempted homicide and a case of extortion .
The French media had pointed out that Mr. Amra had been involved in international drug trafficking and organized crime, but Laure Beccuau, the best prosecutor in Paris, said at a press conference in May that Mr. Amra N ‘had not been sentenced to drugs.
Officials did not publish details on the survey on other people involved in the brutal ambush.
During the May attack, the attackers hit a police van carrying Mr. Amra and then hooded men with automatic weapons surrounded by the van, pulling balls in the vehicle for more than two minutes.
The attackers fled in stolen cars which were then found burned.
The attack, which came while France was trying to project an image of the law and the order before the Paris Olympic Games, was captured on video by security cameras and passers -by, and videos then have been shared on X.
It occurred the same day that a senatorial committee completed a report On drug trafficking crawling in France and recommended the creation of a French equivalent of the US Drug Enforcement Administration.
France has been faced with an increase in drug violence and crime, without limiting itself to traditional hot spots or large cities.
A Senate in 2024 report noted that “the intensification of traffic in rural areas and cities of moderate size” had come with particularly brutal violence.
Selected Aurelien Contributed reports.
