Twenty-five people were arrested in police raids across France on Monday after a series of coordinated attacks on prisons rattled the government this month, a source close to the case said.
The early morning arrests took place outside Paris as well as in Marseille, Lyon and Bordeaux, the source told AFP.
Unknown assailants this month hit several jails and other facilities across France, torching cars, spraying the entrance of one prison with automatic gunfire, and leaving mysterious inscriptions.
The assaults have embarrassed the right-leaning government whose tough-talking Justice and Interior ministers, Gerald Darmanin and Bruno Retailleau, have vowed to intensify the fight against narcotics and drug-related crime.
President Emmanuel Macron has promised the attackers would be “found, tried and punished.”
In a statement on Monday, French anti-terror prosecutors, who are in charge of the case due to the coordinated nature of the attacks, announced 22 arrests, followed by another three later in the day.
The BFMTV channel said several of the arrests took place inside prisons, with suspected leaders of the operations, who are believed to have directed them from inside, extracted from their cells for questioning by police.
The anti-terror prosecutor’s office and the office for the fight against organised crime, known by its acronym JUNALCO, said that the attacks were “likely” to be part of “very serious organised crime”.
The investigation has led to “significant progress” in identifying people who might have carried out the attacks and the instigators, said the prosecutors.
They said they had identified around 15 incidents between April 13 and 21, but other attacks have been recorded at other prisons, although links cannot be established at this stage.
Nearly 200 investigators have been mobilised during the two-week probe.
Relentless fight’
Justice Minister Darmanin has accused people linked to drug trafficking of being responsible.
Thank you to magistrates and law enforcement for arresting the alleged perpetrators of the attacks against prison officers and our country’s prisons early this morning,” Darmanin said on X on Monday.
We remain committed to the law and to the Republic in our relentless fight against drug trafficking.”
Darmanin has said there could be a link to his plan to lock up 200 of France’s 700 most dangerous drug traffickers in two top-security prisons.
Retailleau also congratulated the investigators, praising their “great professionalism” which “made it possible to achieve results in a very short time”.
The raids come as French parliament’s upper and lower houses prepare to vote this week on a bill aimed at stepping up the fight against drug traffickers, with a view to its final adoption.
On April 13 in Agen in southwestern France, the tag “DDPF” — standing for “Rights of French Prisoners” — appeared next to seven cars set on fire in the car park of a prison staff training centre.
This was followed by a series of arson attacks targeting cars of prison staff and other assaults. A jail near the southern city of Toulon was sprayed with automatic gunfire.
While the modus operandi of some of the attacks bore the hallmarks of organised crime, other actions were reminiscent of the tactics of the ultra-left, according to a police source.
