“I must admit that it is a little difficult to understand that an operation of such magnitude was set up for him…” This confidence, whispered by a highly placed police source, illustrates the amazement caused by the ambush fatal attack this Tuesday late in the morning on a convoy of the prison administration. Around 11 a.m., a black car violently hit the van responsible for transferring a detainee at the Incarville tollbooth, on the A13.
“This vehicle had passed this same toll a few minutes earlier and had remained waiting on the shoulder,” specifies the Paris prosecutor’s office. The van was also followed by a second vehicle from which several men jumped out and opened fire on the five agents. Two died, three others were injured, one of whom is still between life and death. This commando operation, as violent as it was precise, was probably aimed at freeing Mohamed Amra, the detainee being transferred.
Links with Marseille banditry
Nicknamed “the fly”, the man, originally from the Rouen region, was sentenced on Friday for “burglary theft” by the Evreux court in three restaurants. A sentence which is added to a long list: aggravated theft, criminal conspiracy, extortion, violence with a weapon… But these convictions, which could portray the image of a petty criminal, are inconsistent with the ongoing cases. The thirty-year-old was transferred this Tuesday morning around 8 a.m. from the Evreux remand center, in Eure, where he has been in detention since April 11, to the Rouen judicial court, in order to be heard in a case of attempted murder and extortion with a weapon.
This file is added to another still under investigation: he is indicted by the Jirs of Marseille in particular for kidnapping and sequestration leading to death. “He is a man originally from Normandy but who has significant links with organized crime in Marseille,” specifies a police source. And added: “It is linked to drug trafficking, rather at the level of the sponsors, but we did not imagine it at the level of such an operation. »
Another escape attempt?
Especially since according to corroborating sources, the man had already tried to escape from Evreux prison very recently: he was placed in solitary confinement on Monday, suspected of having tried to saw the bars of his cell. . “Supervisors noticed that he was putting tape on the bars, which is a way of hiding what he was doing,” specifies a source close to the investigation.
Incarcerated since January 2022, first in the Parisian health prison for a year and a half then at Baumettes, in Marseille, between September 2023 and April 2024, Mohamed Amra was not classified as “DPS”, “particularly detained”. monitored”. ” This case [des barreaux sciés] was too recent for his status to be re-evaluated and we were not aware of any other attempts,” insists a judicial source. However, he was considered a “level 3 escort”, which means that five prison officers, including an officer, had to supervise him. This was indeed the case this Tuesday when the convoy was ambushed at Incarville, in Eure.
A vast system has been put in place to try to find the trace of the man who is now the most wanted man in France. This afternoon, nearly 200 gendarmes and a GIGN team crisscrossed the area while a helicopter flew over the region. Objective: that it does not disappear into nature.