Imprisonment of Mohamed Amra: why was he placed in Condé-sur-Sarthe?

From Romania to Orne. On Tuesday, drug trafficker Mohamed Amra was all smiles at Bucharest airport, handcuffed, surrounded by an armada of Romanian police officers and journalists' cameras. Transferred to France aboard a Falcon plane, the man who calls himself "The Fly" was brought before a Parisian judge in the evening, then charged with " murder by an organized gang, attempted murder by an organized gang, escape by an organized gang, theft by an organized gang, receiving stolen goods by an organized gang and criminal conspiracy ". This time, he was transported during the night to the prison of Condé-sur-Sarthe (Orne) aboard a helicopter, supervised by members of the National Gendarmerie Intervention Group (GIGN).

In this penitentiary establishment in the west of France, " without doubt one of our two most carceral prisons" , stressed Gérald Darmanin, the criminal was placed in strict isolation . He will be entitled to " one hour of walking per day, alone, without ever meeting another prisoner, two hours of telephone communication listened to by the intelligence services, three visits per week extremely controlled with systematic searches ", detailed the minister. Since the prison opened in 2012, this imposing concrete block in the middle of the Normandy countryside has housed the most dangerous prisoners, from the murderer of Laëtitia Perrais Tony Meilhon, the mastermind of the RER attack in Paris in 1995, Smaïn Aït Ali Belkacem and the multi-recidivist robber Christophe Khider. It is also in the running, along with Vendin-le-Vieil (Pas-de-Calais), Saint-Maur (Indre) and the central prison of Arles to house the 100 biggest drug traffickers from July. " Is Mohamed Amra the first in a long series? " asks Harold Vallienne, local delegate of the prison CGT, to Le Figaro .

The architecture of Condé-sur-Sarthe, with its enclosure equipped with a glacis of several dozen meters, and its technology - state-of-the-art telephone and anti-drone jamming, we are told internally - is perceived as one of the safest prisons in France. On January 1, 2025, it housed 102 inmates, for 135 places, an occupancy rate of 75.6%. Unlike other establishments, this one is never saturated, Ahmed Saih, FO Justice delegate secretary, explained to Le Figaro : " It is voluntarily that the administration does not fill this type of prison too much to allow movements between inmates, to have room to maneuver. " The idea is to be able to regularly change Mohamed Amra's cell so that he does not " acclimatize too much to the place ."

The ranks of the guards therefore welcomed the news with serenity. " They were expecting it a little ," says Harold Vallienne. They are " seasoned, professional colleagues, with remarkable composure. They are used to and trained to manage this type of profile ," adds Ahmed Saih. However, the agents expect the administration to have a special process regarding his upcoming hearings before the investigating judge, the judge of liberties and detention or during his confrontations. " Dedicating a GIGN unit to each of his outings would be a real plundering of state resources ," warns Ahmed Saih, who advocates for all of these acts to be carried out by videoconference.

Although the Condé-sur-Sarthe prison is seen as a veritable fortress, it has already been the scene of a violent Islamist attack. In March 2019, inmate Michaël Chiolo , who was serving a thirty-year prison sentence for a common law crime, and his partner Hanane Aboulhana, who was visiting him, seriously injured two guards with two ceramic knives inside the prison. The couple then took refuge for nearly ten hours in the family life unit (UVF) of the ultra-secure establishment. After several attempts at negotiation, the police intervention forces launched the assault, injuring the assailant and killing Hanane Aboulhana. Investigations revealed that the planned attack also targeted the prison director and members of the sentence enforcement commission. The trial is scheduled to take place next June.

For now, union representatives doubt that "La Mouche" is "able to put the establishment in difficulty". But in the long term, the drug trafficking community could be able to gather significant financial resources to organize a violent action, for example at the home of a guard, where accomplices could put pressure on his family. For all the guards, the tragedy of Incarville , where two of their number fell under the bullets of Mohamed Amra's relatives, in May 2024 is still fresh in their minds. " We are not able to guarantee that such an escape will not happen again ", Gérald Darmanin admitted to the press this Wednesday.