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A wave of coordinated attacks have hit prisons across France, with unknown assailants torching cars outside several jails, leaving mysterious inscriptions and hitting one facility with automatic gunfire.<\/p>\n
In recent months Justice Minister Gerald Darmanin and Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau have vowed to intensify the fight against narcotics and drug-related crime.<\/p>\n
Overnight Sunday to Monday, a prison warden’s car set on fire in Seine-et-Marne outside Paris and fire was set to seven vehicles in the car park of a prison staff training centre in Agen in southwest France, a prosecutor’s office and police source said.<\/p>\n
But most of the incidents — several car torchings and an automatic gunfire attack on a prison near the southern city of Toulon — were recorded overnight Monday to Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The inscription “DDPF” — standing for “French prisoners’ rights” — was found at nearly all sites, except for the prison near Toulon where assailants left the mysterious acronym “DDFM”.<\/p>\n
The national anti-terrorist prosecutor’s office said it was taking charge of the investigation.<\/p>\n
Darmanin on Tuesday travelled to the prison near Toulon that was targeted by gunfire.<\/p>\n
French authorities “will not give in,” he told the press outside the jail, adding no one had yet claimed responsibility for the attacks.<\/p>\n
“Attempts are being made to intimidate penal institutions, ranging from the burning of vehicles to automatic gunfire,” he wrote on X\u00a0earlier.<\/p>\n
France is facing “drug trafficking, and is taking measures that will seriously disrupt criminal networks,” he added, promising a “firm” government response.<\/p>\n
– \u00a0‘Protection of prison officers’ –<\/p>\n
Darmanin, who is a former interior minister, is presiding over what he calls a “prison revolution” that envisages putting 200 of France’s 700 most dangerous drug traffickers in two top-security prisons.<\/p>\n
The plan follows the escape from custody last year of suspected drugs baron Mohamed Amra that killed two prison guards. He has since been re-arrested in Romania and extradited back to France.<\/p>\n
All lines of inquiry are being pursued over this week’s attacks, but investigators are not ruling out that anarchists could be behind them, one source close to the case said.<\/p>\n
But Darmanin said the methods seemed reminiscent of those used in the drugs world.<\/p>\n
“It looks awfully like what I knew when I was interior minister: people paid a couple of hundred or thousand euros on small contracts to intimidate,” he said.<\/p>\n
A source close to the matter told AFP it looked like a coordinated attack “clearly linked to the anti-drug gang strategy” pursued by Darmanin.<\/p>\n
Retailleau called for a “prompt” reinforcement of “the protection of prison officers and establishments”.<\/p>\n
– ‘Full-on attack’ –<\/p>\n
Early Monday night, several individuals armed with automatic rifles targeted the gate of the prison near Toulon, according to the authorities.<\/p>\n
The prison’s grey gates were peppered with bullet holes and spray-painted with a mysterious inscription reading “DDFM”, an AFP journalist reported.<\/p>\n
In the southern port city of Marseille, ten prison vehicles were tagged with the inscription DDPF overnight Monday to Tuesday, the head of the Bouches-du-Rhone department, Martine Vassal, said on X.<\/p>\n
In the car park of the Villepinte prison north of Paris, three vehicles — including two belonging to prison staff — were set on fire, a police source said. A fuel canister was found on site, and CCTV footage showed two individuals torching cars.<\/p>\n
Cars were also torched in Aix and Valence in the south of the country, a police source said.<\/p>\n
“These criminal acts are a full-on attack on our institution, on the republic and the staff who serve the republic every day,” the FO Justice union said, calling for a “strong, clear response” from the government.<\/p>\n
Wilfried Fonck, national secretary for the UFAP UNSA Justice union, told AFP the prison system did not have enough staff to secure prison perimeters “24\/7”.<\/p>\n
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