Mohamed Amra, 30, nicknamed 'La Mouche' (The Fly) was being transferred from Rouen to a prison in Evreux when armed men attacked the prison van, klling two police officers.
Mohamed Amra, 30, nicknamed 'La Mouche' (The Fly) was being transferred from Rouen to a prison in Evreux when armed men attacked the prison van, klling two police officers.
Security footage has captured the moment gunmen ambushed a prison van and freed a convicted drug trafficker dubbed “France’s most wanted man”.
Two police officers were killed as the police van and another police vehicle came under attack from “heavy weapons” on Tuesday. Two others remain in a “life-threatening” critical condition.
CCTV images from the A145 motorway near Rouen in northern France showed a black car swerving around oncoming traffic before ramming into the front of a prison van.
The car traps the van against the vehicle behind it at a toll gate before a group of hooded individuals emerge and surround the vehicle.
Mohamed Amra, 30, nicknamed 'La Mouche' (The Fly) was being transferred from Rouen to a prison in Evreux when armed men attacked the prison van.
They appear to fire shots at the officers inside the van before forcing open the side door to free Mohamed Amra, 30, who reports say was the head of a narcotics network.
A massive manhunt is now under way to catch the escapee, who is nicknamed “La Mouche” (The Fly), and was being transferred from Rouen to a prison in Evreux.
French President Emmanuel Macron condemned the attack which “comes to a shock to us all” while Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said the “French Republic has come under attack”, pledging to find and punish the perpetrators.
Elite GIGN units were sent to the scene along with around 200 gendarmes as part of a plan Epervier (Sparrowhawk plan) granting police sweeping stop-and-search powers to find fugitives or abduction victims.
Mohamed Amra, 30, is reportedly the head of a drugs network.
Police unions said their colleagues stood “no chance” given that they were travelling in an un-armoured van armed with simple handguns against men carrying “weapons of war”.
The incident comes as a cross-party senatorial committee of inquiry into drug trafficking concluded earlier today that France is “submerged with drug trafficking” which is “infiltrating everywhere like an inexorably rising tide”.
The committee also warned that Macron’s anti-drugs plan to be presented shortly by the government is “meagre” and “not up to the task”.
French justice minister Eric Dupond-Moretti said the country “is in mourning” as he confirmed the death of the two officers.
“Two men died, one of them leaving behind a wife and two children who were due to celebrate their 21st birthday in two days’ time”, he said.
“The other leaves behind a five-month pregnant wife, relatives, and, of course, friends,” he added. “My first thoughts are for them.”
Graphic / via Getty Images
Dupond-Moretti, who appeared in shock, said: “The last deaths in the prison service date back to 1992,” and that the gunmen “are people for whom life means nothing”.
“They will be arrested, they will be tried and they will be punished in a way that is commensurate with the crime they committed.”
