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Local France
23-07-2025
- Politics
- Local France
France's first top drug lords moved to new supermax prison
Justice Minister Gerald Darmanin said on X that 17 drug traffickers – 'among the most dangerous in our country' – had been transferred to the prison in the northern town of Vendin-le-Vieil 'under exceptional security conditions'. Seven prison vans arrived at the site on Tuesday, accompanied by police motorcycle escorts. Darmanin has said he wants to lock up 200 of France's biggest drug traffickers in two top-security prisons, including Vendin-le-Vieil, in a bid to crack down on networks that operate from within jails. READ ALSO France adopts new bill to combat drug-related crime In October, a high-security prison wing is to open in the north-western French town of Conde-sur-Sarthe. David Lacroix, who represents the FO Justice union, said that around 60 out of the 100 prisoners due to be sent to Vendin-le-Vieil are to arrive this month with the rest due by mid-September. The prisoners come from mainland France as well as France's Caribbean territories, he added. 'Their daily lives will change,' said Lacroix. As part of the new regime, mobile phone signals will be jammed and prisoners will undergo mandatory searches after every contact with the outside world. Thomas Vaugrand, a representative of Ufap Unsa Justice union, said the measures aimed to increase the isolation of the traffickers. 'These will be high-profile inmates,' he said. 'They are all prisoners who have significant financial resources on the outside and the means to continue their trafficking or order murders from their cells.' The Vendin-le-Vieil jail, one of France's two most secure prisons, has been renovated to strengthen its security. The exercise yard has been concreted over to prevent objects from being hidden and an airport-style body scanner installed. Advertisement Grating has been added to the bars on the cells and hatches installed on all doors so that prisoners can be handcuffed before they leave their cells. A glass screen now prevents physical contact between inmates and visitors. Notorious drug baron Mohamed Amra, known as 'La Mouche' , will eventually be one of the Vendin-le-Vieil inmates. Darmanin pushed for tougher security after an attack last year on a prison van carrying Amra in which he was freed and two prison guards killed.
Yahoo
17-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
France cuts prison activities to smooth facial massage outcry
France's powerful justice minister on Monday announced the government was restricting nearly all recreational activities for prisoners after it emerged inmates from one institution had been offered facial massages. Gerald Darmanin, a former interior minister who revels in taking a hard line on law and order issues, said that all special activities for prisoners would be halted if they did not concern education, the French language or sport. The FO Justice union had last week angrily denounced the offering of facial massages to prisoners at a prison in the southern city of Toulouse. According to the newspaper La Depeche, which first reported the information, around twenty prisoners benefited from a facial massage. This reportedly came a week after "country dancing" was on their activities menu. "There is no question of having any recreational activities that shock all our fellow citizens. It shocked me deeply when I found out that this free activity proposed locally had been accepted," Darmanin said on a visit to a new high-security prison in western France. "I asked the director of the prison administration... that instructions be given to all prison directors so that we limit ourselves absolutely to academic support and the French language, to work-related activities and to sports activities inside the prison," he told journalists. "We must now completely stop these activities, whose existence no one understands," he added, saying they would be halted from Monday. The government is under pressure to take a hard line on law and order issues due to the rise of the far right and against the background of intensifying drug-related crime in France. Last month, a detainee took advantage of a trip to a Paris museum to escape his supervisors, prosecutors said, adding they had objected to him taking part in the first place. cor-ban-sjw/ah/yad
