EGN NEWS DESK
Dozens of investigators scoured the crime scene in northern France. More than 450 law enforcement officials combed the countryside and the encircling space. Interpol issued an alert.
French officers mentioned they’d “spare no effort or means” to trace down closely armed assailants who ambushed a jail convoy in a brazen daytime assault, killing two guards and liberating an inmate.
But three weeks into an in depth manhunt, the suspects are nonetheless on the run.
The case has raised uncomfortable questions on whether or not France’s justice system totally grasped how harmful the inmate was and if its overburdened prisons had performed a job.
The authorities have been tight-lipped, declining even to specify how many individuals participated within the assault. But they are saying their investigation has made progress.
Laure Beccuau, the highest Paris prosecutor, advised Franceinfo radio final week that the authorities had “a variety of leads that I might describe as severe.” She didn’t elaborate, saying solely that the ambush had been well-organized, and that the suspects appeared to have deliberate hide-outs.
The attackers vanished in stolen automobiles that have been later discovered burned. Experts say it’s only a query of when, not if, they’re captured.
“It all the time takes a little bit of time,” mentioned Christian Flaesch, the previous head of the Paris police legal investigations division. But in the long run, he added, fugitives “are nearly all caught.”
Violent jail breaks are uncommon in France. The two jail guards who died within the assault final month, at a freeway tollbooth about 85 miles northwest of Paris, have been the primary to be killed within the line of responsibility in 32 years.
“This violence is kind of unprecedented,” mentioned Brendan Kemmet, a journalist and writer of books about France’s most well-known jail escapees, together with Antonio Ferrara and Rédoine Faïd, infamous armed robbers who each staged separate jailbreaks involving helicopters, in 2003 and 2018.
Mr. Ferrara was caught after 4 months on the run; Mr. Faïd, after three. How lengthy the inmate who escaped final month, Mohamed Amra, will evade seize is an open query.
“He’s now France’s most needed man,” Mr. Kemmet mentioned.
Mr. Amra, 30 — also referred to as La Mouche, or The Fly — had been sentenced to 18 months in jail for housebreaking, certainly one of greater than a dozen convictions for crimes together with extortion and assault.
But he was additionally below investigation on extra severe costs — in Marseille, in reference to a kidnapping and murder, and in Rouen, in reference to an tried murder and extortion case. His lawyer declined to remark for this text.
The Interpol alert — a pink discover — might point out suspicions that Mr. Amra has fled France. Experts mentioned a flight overseas couldn’t be dominated out, however famous that the ambush occurred about 125 miles from the closest border, and that Mr. Amra was native to the Rouen area, the place he was being detained earlier than the assault.
Criminals on the run “are inclined to fall again on acquainted floor,” Mr. Flaesch mentioned.
Fugitives can evade detection by holing up and utilizing a community of legal or private acquaintances to remain equipped. But these networks are probably now below shut watch — telephones tapped, journeys tailed, routines scrutinized for uncommon exercise.
Guillaume Farde, a safety professional who teaches at Sciences Po college in Paris, famous that an unusually massive pizza order helped police finally observe down the Brussels hide-out of Salah Abdeslam, who helped perform the November 2015 assault that killed 130 individuals within the French capital.
“The solely approach to escape from a manhunt, even quickly, is to cease shifting,” Mr. Farde mentioned. “Until somebody within the entourage both makes a mistake or offers info — or each.”
Mr. Abdeslam was taken into custody after a shootout; he had spent 4 months on the run. But Mr. Abdeslam didn’t have a enterprise to handle, and specialists mentioned Mr. Amra might discover it more durable to remain below the radar.
The authorities initially described Mr. Amra as a midlevel legal whose profile didn’t match the dangerous ambush. But particulars of the investigations that concerned him, revealed in French information shops, have come to color a special image.
Based on leaked police studies and telephone tapping data, Le Parisien and BFMTV reported that Mr. Amra had juggled cellphones from behind bars to run schemes that they mentioned included drug trafficking and kidnappings for ransom. He additionally tried to purchase assault rifles whereas in jail, the studies mentioned.
Éric Dupond-Moretti, France’s justice minister, acknowledged earlier than Parliament final week that Mr. Amra had proven indicators of “dangerousness” that “didn’t appear to have been considered.”
He has ordered an inner investigation into the jail administration’s dealing with of Mr. Amra — at the same time as questions swirl about coordination between different branches of the justice system.
In a visitor essay in Le Monde, two prime judges, Béatrice Brugère and Jean-Christophe Muller, referenced the case and mentioned efforts to fight organized crime in France have been cut up between legislation enforcement items that didn’t all the time cooperate adequately.
Mr. Amra was focused by separate investigations in several jurisdictions. If these inquiries had been merged, the judges wrote, “the true extent of the dangerousness of this legal and of his supporters” would have been clear.
It stays unclear whether or not police investigators in Marseille and Rouen had shared any info with jail officers, who had elevated safety for Mr. Amra’s convoy however to not the utmost degree.
Still, the case has introduced consideration to a French jail system that’s bursting on the seams.
France’s official jail watchdog warned just lately that incarceration charges have been reaching highs each month: There have been almost 77,500 inmates in April, however room for fewer than 62,000. That has led to overcrowded and unsanitary cells and violence, the watchdog says.
“We’ve been chronically understaffed for the previous 10 to fifteen years, and recruitment isn’t making up for job vacancies,” mentioned Wilfried Fonck, a consultant of UFAP-UNSA, a jail guards’ union that staged protests after Mr. Amra’s escape. “And on the opposite aspect, the jail inhabitants goes up each month.”
The studies about Mr. Amra conducting enterprise from behind bars didn’t shock Mr. Fonck. Drones have delivered telephones to prisoners previously, he famous, and guards have been barred from looking inmates leaving visiting rooms, making it simpler for contraband to slide in.
Mr. Dupond-Moretti, the justice minister, has mentioned that the federal government will work to deal with the problems highlighted by Mr. Amra’s case by deploying extra anti-drone and phone-scrambling instruments in prisons. It additionally will contemplate permitting extra systematic searches and using videoconferencing to keep away from pointless transportation of inmates, he mentioned.
Unions are hopeful that the federal government will observe via, however cautious.
“Prisons have been sick for 30 years,” Mr. Fonck mentioned. “Not since yesterday.”
