Police operation to capture escaped prisoner in France – DW – 05/14/2024

A prisoner escaped after a spectacular attack on a prison van in France left at least two officers dead, authorities said, promising a tough response. According to police sources, the attack, accompanied by the hitting of a vehicle and the firing of “large caliber weapons”, took place at a tollbooth in Incarville, in the Eure region, around eleven in the morning this Tuesday (05/14/2024). In northwest France.

“A prison convoy has been attacked,” Justice Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti wrote on the social network X. “Two of our prison officers were killed, three were seriously injured,” said the minister, who promised to do “everything” to “find the perpetrators” of the attack. French authorities have launched a major police operation to catch the culprits behind the murder of two prison officers.

President Emmanuel Macron said, “Every effort is being made to find the perpetrators of this crime and ensure justice in the name of the French people.” He said he was “shocked” by the attack. The Justice Minister said it was the first time since 1992 that a magistrate agent had been killed while performing his duties.

According to another police source, the attack was carried out by a group of persons who used two vehicles. One of these vehicles was found “burnt” after the incidents. The interior minister, Gerald Darmanin, said he had instructed “hundreds of police and gendarmes” to organize and find the perpetrators of the attack.

The Gendarmerie indicated that its elite unit, the GIGN, was heading to the scene to search for the escaped prisoner and his companions. Following the prison van attack on Tuesday, an investigation into “murder and attempted murder in an organized gang (which carries a life sentence), escape and association with an organized gang, acquisition and possession of weapons of war and murder Wanted to commit a crime with you.”

The prison convoy did not have a police or gendarmerie escort, which comes only at the request of the prison administration. But the transfer of the escaped prisoner, Mohammed Amra, who was thirty years old and convicted of robbery and “kidnapping resulting in death”, was not considered dangerous.

The incident shocked France, where attacks by organized gangs on armored cash transport vans were very common in the 70s and 80s, but these types of attacks had already fallen into oblivion.

LGC (AFP, EFE)