France is in shock and wonders how it was possible that on Tuesday a commando was able to attack a prison police van, kill two officers, seriously injure three others and free the prisoner, Mohamed Amra, known as “the Moscow”. A massive manhunt is underway, “with unprecedented means to find not only the person who escaped, but also the gang that released him,” said Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin.
More than 450 police officers and gendarmes are employed in the Eure department alone, in the Normandy region, where the assault took place (exactly at the Incarville motorway toll booth). But the research extends to all of France, and beyond. Interpol has in fact issued a “red notice” which can be immediately enforced in all 181 countries belonging to the organization that fights international crime. If Amra were also identified abroad, he could be temporarily detained pending extradition to France.
On Wednesday morning, prison officers observed a minute’s silence. And the protest mounts. An officer had not been killed in the performance of his duties since 1992. Trade unionist Frederic Liakhoff noted that dFaced with the weapons of war used by the commando, the agents only had “automatic pistols”. Among the requests put forward there is also a “drastic reduction in prisoner translations by favoring the use of videoconferencing”.
Amra, 30, already has it under her belt thirteen convictions but “none so far for violation of drug legislation” clarified Laure Beccuau, public prosecutor in Paris. However, he is considered a leading exponent of a drug trafficking organization linked to the “Blacks” of Marseille.
Last May 10th the last 18 month sentence issued by the Court of Evreux for burglary. Amra was already in prison in precautionary custody for other investigations in which he was involved, including an attempted murder and a kidnapping which ended in the death of the kidnapped man. Two days later he attempted to saw off the bars of the cell in which he was locked up. For this gesture he was summoned by the judge on Tuesday. For his lawyer, Hugues Vigier, «it is something incomprehensible. I have a hard time imagining that this guy would be involved. It is an action that does not correspond to the profile I had perceived of him. If he is, it means that I was really wrong about him and about what he might be capable of.”
