Dozens of investigators scoured the crime scene in northern France. Greater than 450 law enforcement officials combed the countryside and the encircling space. Interpol issued an alert.
French officers mentioned they’d “spare no effort or means” to trace down closely armed assailants who ambushed a jail convoy in a brazen daytime assault, killing two guards and liberating an inmate.
However three weeks into an intensive manhunt, the suspects are nonetheless on the run.
The case has raised uncomfortable questions on whether or not France’s justice system absolutely grasped how harmful the inmate was and if its overburdened prisons had performed a task.
The authorities have been tight-lipped, declining even to specify how many individuals participated within the assault. However they are saying their investigation has made progress.
Laure Beccuau, the highest Paris prosecutor, instructed Franceinfo radio final week that the authorities had “a variety of leads that I’d describe as critical.” She didn’t elaborate, saying solely that the ambush had been well-organized, and that the suspects appeared to have deliberate hide-outs.
The attackers vanished in stolen automobiles that had been later discovered burned. Specialists say it is just a query of when, not if, they’re captured.
“It all the time takes a little bit of time,” mentioned Christian Flaesch, the previous head of the Paris police prison investigations division. However ultimately, he added, fugitives “are virtually all caught.”
Violent jail breaks are uncommon in France. The 2 jail guards who died within the assault final month, at a freeway tollbooth about 85 miles northwest of Paris, had been the primary to be killed within the line of obligation in 32 years.
“This violence is sort of unprecedented,” mentioned Brendan Kemmet, a journalist and writer of books about France’s most well-known jail escapees, together with Antonio Ferrara and Rédoine Faïd, infamous armed robbers who each staged separate jailbreaks involving helicopters, in 2003 and 2018.
Mr. Ferrara was caught after 4 months on the run; Mr. Faïd, after three. How lengthy the inmate who escaped final month, Mohamed Amra, will evade seize is an open query.
“He’s now France’s most needed man,” Mr. Kemmet mentioned.
Mr. Amra, 30 — also referred to as La Mouche, or The Fly — had been sentenced to 18 months in jail for housebreaking, one in every of greater than a dozen convictions for crimes together with extortion and assault.
However he was additionally beneath investigation on extra critical prices — in Marseille, in reference to a kidnapping and murder, and in Rouen, in reference to an tried murder and extortion case. His lawyer declined to remark for this text.
The Interpol alert — a crimson discover — may point out suspicions that Mr. Amra has fled France. Specialists mentioned a flight overseas couldn’t be dominated out, however famous that the ambush occurred about 125 miles from the closest border, and that Mr. Amra was native to the Rouen area, the place he was being detained earlier than the assault.
Criminals on the run “are inclined to fall again on acquainted floor,” Mr. Flaesch mentioned.
Fugitives can evade detection by holing up and utilizing a community of prison or private acquaintances to remain provided. However these networks are doubtless now beneath shut watch — telephones tapped, journeys tailed, routines scrutinized for uncommon exercise.
Guillaume Farde, a safety skilled who teaches at Sciences Po college in Paris, famous that an unusually giant pizza order helped police finally observe down the Brussels hide-out of Salah Abdeslam, who helped perform the November 2015 assault that killed 130 individuals within the French capital.
“The one approach to escape from a manhunt, even quickly, is to cease transferring,” Mr. Farde mentioned. “Till somebody within the entourage both makes a mistake or provides data — or each.”
Mr. Abdeslam was taken into custody after a shootout; he had spent 4 months on the run. However Mr. Abdeslam didn’t have a enterprise to handle, and specialists mentioned Mr. Amra might discover it more durable to remain beneath the radar.
The authorities initially described Mr. Amra as a midlevel prison whose profile didn’t match the dangerous ambush. However particulars of the investigations that concerned him, revealed in French information retailers, have come to color a distinct image.
Primarily based on leaked police experiences and cellphone tapping data, Le Parisien and BFMTV reported that Mr. Amra had juggled cellphones from behind bars to run schemes that they mentioned included drug trafficking and kidnappings for ransom. He additionally tried to purchase assault rifles whereas in jail, the experiences mentioned.
Éric Dupond-Moretti, France’s justice minister, acknowledged earlier than Parliament final week that Mr. Amra had proven indicators of “dangerousness” that “didn’t appear to have been considered.”
He has ordered an inside investigation into the jail administration’s dealing with of Mr. Amra — whilst questions swirl about coordination between different branches of the justice system.
In a visitor essay in Le Monde, two prime judges, Béatrice Brugère and Jean-Christophe Muller, referenced the case and mentioned efforts to fight organized crime in France had been break up between regulation enforcement models that didn’t all the time cooperate adequately.
Mr. Amra was focused by separate investigations in numerous jurisdictions. If these inquiries had been merged, the judges wrote, “the true extent of the dangerousness of this prison and of his supporters” would have been clear.
It stays unclear whether or not police investigators in Marseille and Rouen had shared any data with jail officers, who had elevated safety for Mr. Amra’s convoy however to not the utmost stage.
Nonetheless, the case has introduced consideration to a French jail system that’s bursting on the seams.
France’s official jail watchdog warned not too long ago that incarceration charges had been reaching highs each month: There have been almost 77,500 inmates in April, however room for fewer than 62,000. That has led to overcrowded and unsanitary cells and violence, the watchdog says.
“We’ve been chronically understaffed for the previous 10 to fifteen years, and recruitment isn’t making up for job vacancies,” mentioned Wilfried Fonck, a consultant of UFAP-UNSA, a jail guards’ union that staged protests after Mr. Amra’s escape. “And on the opposite aspect, the jail inhabitants goes up each month.”
The experiences about Mr. Amra conducting enterprise from behind bars didn’t shock Mr. Fonck. Drones have delivered telephones to prisoners up to now, he famous, and guards had been barred from looking inmates leaving visiting rooms, making it simpler for contraband to slide in.
Mr. Dupond-Moretti, the justice minister, has mentioned that the federal government will work to handle the problems highlighted by Mr. Amra’s case by deploying extra anti-drone and phone-scrambling instruments in prisons. It additionally will take into account permitting extra systematic searches and using videoconferencing to keep away from pointless transportation of inmates, he mentioned.
Unions are hopeful that the federal government will comply with by way of, however cautious.
“Prisons have been sick for 30 years,” Mr. Fonck mentioned. “Not since yesterday.”
