France’s justice minister yesterday said gun and arson attacks on at least six prisons around the country were acts of terrorism directed at security officials charged with guarding some of the nation’s most hardened crime kingpins.
Visiting Toulon prison in southern France, whose entrance was shot at with an AK-47 automatic rifle, Gerald Darmanin said he could not be sure if the attacks were linked to government efforts to clamp down on France’s fast-growing drug trade.
But he said authorities were making life much harder for imprisoned gangsters, and the government would not shy away from tackling drug crime, which has boosted support for the far right.
“The republic will not back down,” he told reporters. “These are extremely serious crimes ... an attack on the public prison service, that is, a terrorist attack.”
Years of record South American cocaine imports to Europe have transformed local drug markets, sparking a wave of violence.
Despite record cocaine seizures in France, gangs are reaping windfalls as they expand from traditional power bases in cities such as Marseille into smaller towns unused to drug violence.
Darmanin, who plans to create new high-security prisons to crack down on gangsters who run their empires from behind bars, said at least six prisons had been targeted.
Prison officers’ union UFAP said vehicles were set on fire outside jails in Villepinte, Nanterre, Aix-Luynes, and Valence. In Nancy, a prison officer was threatened at home, while in Marseille, there was an attempted arson attack.
The National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office (PNAT) said it had taken charge of the probe into the attacks, which also targeted the National School of Prison Administration. The PNAT said officers from France’s domestic intelligence agency DGSI would assist in the investigation.
Darmanin said it was unusual for PNAT, rather than specialised organised crime prosecutors, to take charge of the investigation, but it was justified.
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