Attacks on French prisons over drugs

Attacks on French prisons over drugs

Attacks were carried out in several French prisons last night in response to government efforts to... Drug trafficking to fight. Top officials reported the incidents on Tuesday as authorities confront a "tsunami" of cocaine pouring into the country.

Attacks on prisons across the country

Unknown attackers fired automatic fire at the prison in the southern French city of Toulon, while vehicles were set on fire and staff threatened at other institutions across the country. It is still unclear whether the attacks were coordinated and who carried them out.

Government reactions

Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin, who is pushing ahead with measures to tighten prison security and combat gangsters who run their empires from behind bars, said he would travel to Toulon. "Attempts have already been made to intimidate staff in several prisons, from burning vehicles to shooting with automatic weapons," Darmanin wrote on platform

Prison security is being strengthened

Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau announced that he had ordered local prefects, police and gendarmerie to immediately increase protection of staff and prisons. “The state’s response must be relentless,” he wrote on

Cocaine and drug violence in France

According to media reports, the prisons attacked include facilities in Toulon, Aix-En-Provence, Marseille, Valence and Nîmes in the south of France and Villepinte and Nanterre near Paris. Years of record imports of South American cocaine into Europe have boosted local drug markets and sparked a wave of drug violence on the continent.

France has not been spared from this development, with record cocaine seizures and gangs profiting from the white powder as they expand their power from traditional strongholds like Marseille into smaller cities that have not previously faced drug violence.

Political consequences and measures

The rise in gang crime has boosted support for the far-right National Cohesion party and pulled French politics to the right. Darmanin, a former interior minister, and Retailleau have prioritized combating drug trafficking. In February, when Retailleau announced record seizures of 47 tonnes of cocaine in the first 11 months of 2024, compared to 23 tonnes in all of 2023, he spoke of a "white tsunami" that has changed the rules of crime.

Darmanin proposes a series of measures to tighten prison security, including isolating the country's 100 most dangerous drug lords. Lawmakers are also close to passing a sweeping new anti-drug trafficking law that would create a national organized crime prosecutor's office and expand police investigative powers to deal with drug-related crimes.

A bright spot in the fight against drug crime was the return in February of Mohamed Amra, a French fugitive known as "The Fly." His escape while being transported from a prison to a court hearing resulted in the deaths of two prison guards and was seen by right-wing politicians as evidence that France has lost control of drug crime.