French Manhunt After Prison Convoy Attack Kills 2, Injured 3
By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News
PARIS (Worthy News) – Interpol, the international police body, issued an alert Wednesday for a French inmate who was freed during a violent ambush of a prison convoy a day earlier that left two prison officers dead and seriously injuring three others.
Wednesday’s alert came amid concern that the inmate — Mohamed Amra, 30, born in the French northern city of Rouen and nicknamed “The Fly” — had fled abroad or was trying to.
A massive police manhunt, briefly interrupted for a moment of silence for those who died, continued to find the armed assailants who attacked the prison convoy, freeing the inmate they were escorting.
Tuesday’s violence shocked the nation, prompting the prime minister to pledge that the gang would be caught, saying, “They will pay.”
“We are tracking you, we will find you, and we will punish you,” Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said in parliament to applause from lawmakers.”They will pay for what they have done.”
French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said “unprecedented” efforts were being deployed.
Hundreds of officers were searching for the escaped convict and the assailants who laid in wait for the prison van transporting him, ramming a car into it before opening fire, according to footage seen by Worthy News.
EXTENSIVE PREPARATION
Gérald Darmanin, France’s interior minister, told media that the riskiness of the attack and the amount of preparation that appeared to have gone into its planning was surprising as Amra was not high-profile, despite a lengthy criminal record.
“The violence, the massacre, the disproportionate means used to free this person,” the minister said, did not match what the authorities knew of Amra, whom the interior minister described as “not the biggest criminal that we have in our prisons.”
Amra was not in a maximum-security prison, and prison authorities had not requested a police escort during his roughly one-hour transfer between a courthouse in Rouen and a jail in Évreux.
He was convicted 13 times for offenses including extortion and assault, as well as several thefts, according to the top Paris prosecutor. His most recent conviction was for burglary, and he has not been convicted on any drug-related charges, officials said.
But Darmanin told the French Senate, called that Amra was a drug trafficker and said he was suspected of being responsible for ordering drug-related murders in Marseille, in southern France. Amra is reportedly under investigation there in connection with a drug-related kidnapping and homicide case.
With time ticking into the Thursday, Interpol urged its members to watch for the convict.
The notice — an appeal made by law enforcement in one country, asking their foreign counterparts to locate and arrest a suspect — says that Amra is about 5-foot-8 to 5-foot-11, with brown hair and dark brown eyes.
Grainy pictures accompanying the notice show him standing in a gray-and-white tracksuit.
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