France reels after double prison guard killing

A banner reading "dead prison" hangs outside La Santé prison in Paris

“You can do a hold-up without killing. They didn’t have to kill.”

Outside La Santé prison in central Paris, feelings are running high. Thirty or 40 prison officers are holding a protest over Tuesday’s murder of two colleagues at an ambush at a motorway toll in Normandy.

A banner reads: “Prisons in Mourning.”

“You put a gun to the guard’s head and say ‘let him go or I shoot’. Of course the guard is going to obey. And no-one dies,” one officer says.

“Hold-ups happen. It could have been anyone of us in the van. But they didn’t have to kill,” adds another.

It is the callousness of the assault that has most upset prison officers – and the French public in general.

Gone is any semblance of a semi-mythical code of honour linked to the “good old days” of le grand banditisme. Back then, it was said, bandits never set out to take a life.

Now - it seems - they do. “There was no opening discussion. Their first words were a salvo of gunfire,” says one of the guards at La Santé.

The government has promised that every possible means will be deployed to recapture Mohamed Amra, and the gang that sprung him as he was returned to jail from a court hearing in Rouen.

But across the country talk centres on the ultra-violence that has become hallmark of the drugs underworld.

Amra was a figure in that underworld - though how important remains unclear.

Police quoted in the French press describe him as “middle-ranking” – with a string of convictions, to be sure, but mainly for lower-level crimes like aggravated robbery.

But if he was not a caïd (kingpin), how did he merit - and organise - the meticulous and ruthless escape plan, mobilising at least five vehicles, an unknown number of armed men, and bolt-holes where they could all go to ground?

At La Santé prison, they remember the man who bore the nickname La Mouche (The Fly), because he was incarcerated here in 2022.

In June that year the body of a man from Dreux was found in a burned-out car in a suburb of Marseille. The man - a known drug-dealer - had been killed in one of the city’s endless gangland tit-for-tats.

Evidently police suspected a link with La Mouche – because he was placed under judicial investigation in connection with the murder.

But if he was in La Santé prison when the murder took place, what role could he have played?

The answer is simple: a very big one.

“Every prisoner has access to a mobile phone,” says the guard. “Every single day we observe about 20 items thrown over the walls of the prison. They are in general phones and drugs.”

Prison staff have been staging protests across the country after the attack in northern France

Indeed, on top of the prison walls it is possible to see plastic bags that have been caught there - gifts for inmates that did not quite make it over.

So it would have been perfectly possible for Amra to organise his network from inside his cell. According to Le Monde newspaper, he was also pulling the strings in a number of other rackets – extortion and kidnapping for money, for example.

“Everything is tilted in favour of the criminal,” says the guard. “For example by law a prisoner has to be informed 48 hours in advance of any court hearing.

“So of course Amra was able to tell accomplices on the outside exactly when he was expected in Rouen. All they had to do was wait.”

The killings on Tuesday coincided with the release of a Senate report into the spread of drugs crime in France, and the concomitant resort to extreme violence.

“We are not yet a narco-state. But the warning sounds are now alarm-bells,” says Jerome Durain, a Socialist Party senator and co-author of the report.

The senators recommend that the state give itself a number of new powers in order to tackle the scourge, which it says is worth €3-6 billion (£2.57-5.15 billion) a year.

At La Santé, they want more trained staff, better protection and more authority.

“Everything is geared towards maintaining order. All the prisoners smoke cannabis. They know it, and they know that we know it.

"But we do nothing because if they smoke, it keeps things quiet. Ultimately it corrupts the system."

With European elections approaching, Tuesday’s drama is grist to the mill for the far-right, already riding high in the polls. Marine Le Pen's National Rally’s call for tougher policing and tougher penalties clearly strikes a chord.

At La Santé many of the prison staff are black – originally from Africa or the Caribbean.

“We were all brought up in a world of the political left,” says one, named Geoff. “But we are moving to the right. I can’t speak for the others, but I will be voting for the (far-right) National Rally.”