After the attack on a prison van which cost the lives of two prison officers on Tuesday, their colleagues are calling for the continuation of the movement to block establishments started the day before this Thursday, to “maintain the pressure” on the government.
In Caen, where the two victims of the attack on Tuesday in Eure were based, around forty staff from the day shift were gathered around 6:30 a.m. in the main courtyard of the penitentiary center around pallets.
Limit transfers and improve weaponry
The union representatives, who were received on Wednesday in Paris by the Minister of Justice, welcomed the opening of dialogue on some of their demands.
“A certain number of commitments will be made quickly” by the ministry, in particular to improve the arming of agents during transfers, and to limit these transfers by developing judicial hearings by videoconference, declared Emmanuel Baudin, secretary general of FO Justice, following the meeting with Éric Dupond-Moretti. But they demanded a written document, on which the agents will be consulted, before ceasing their actions.
At dawn on Wednesday, hundreds of prison officers blocked movements in their establishments to demand more resources, before observing a minute of silence in memory of the two officers killed the day before at the Incarville tollbooth (Eure) by a heavily armed commando.
Have access to detainee files?
Facing their attackers, the agents only had “a simple Sig Sauer [une arme de poing] against weapons of war,” said Frédéric Liakhoff, FO-Justice secretary at the Caen penitentiary center, where the two victims were based.
Among the points of discussion between prison unions and the ministry is the possibility for agents carrying out transfers to have very rapid access to “inmate files”. Currently, “colleagues do not necessarily know who they are transporting,” noted the secretary general of FO Justice.
The hunt to find Mohamed Amra continues and is also being organized outside the borders, with a “red notice” issued by Interpol at the request of the French authorities to locate the fugitive, Mohamed Amra.