After five hours of “long and complicated negotiation”, the hostage-taking at Arles prison (Bouches-du-Rhône) ended without causing any injuries on Friday with the release of the five hostages “safe and sound ” and the surrender of the detainee, considered “very dangerous”.
Among these five people – three nurses, a prison guard and a psychiatrist – the doctor had been released an hour earlier.
“The hostage taker has surrendered. No injuries”, confirmed shortly before 4:00 p.m. the Bouches-du-Rhône police headquarters, a few moments after the announcement to the press on site, by a union representative, of the release of the hostages “safe and sound”.
The detainee, a 37-year-old Guyana national, with an “unstable” profile according to several sources, “took five staff hostage (…) for five hours, under threat of a weapon that he had made” with “metal spikes”, declared Bouches-du-Rhône police prefect Pierre-Edouard Colliex on site at a press conference, describing the man as “very dangerous”.
It was while he was going around 10:45 a.m. to the complex addiction care unit (UCSA) of the prison, “as part of follow-up care”, that the man threatened the four members of staff medical officer and the supervisor, “with a homemade punch-type weapon”, before “sequestering” them in an area of the care unit by “locking a door with bars” and “impeding it by means of of a medical bed”, then specified in a press release the public prosecutor of Tarascon, Laurent Gumbau.
“At first, (the detainee) allowed the doctor, a young mother, to be freed”, and then “we were able to free the other hostages, so things ended well but they could have been very dangerous in reason for the weaponry” and “the profile of the hostage taker”, detailed the police prefect.
– Uncertain psychiatric profile –
This man who was serving “a long criminal sentence” and was known “for acts of violence, notably in detention on several occasions”, finally surrendered to the Raid without causing any injuries, after a “fairly long and quite complicated” concluded “without the use of force”, he continued.
This prisoner seemed to have the “motive” to change establishment, but “there was no precise, written request, as prisoners can make to the prison administration”, underlined during the same conference of urges the Tarascon prosecutor.
Sentenced by an assize court on appeal to 18 years of criminal imprisonment in 2020, “for acts of rape at gunpoint, as well as various misdemeanor convictions”, according to the Tarascon prosecutor, he had arrived at the Arles prison in November 2023 and was available for release in July 2031.
While several sources have highlighted the detainee's psychiatric disorders, these have not been formally confirmed by the magistrate, according to whom “at this stage, (…) we do not have a psychiatric profile, no psychosis, no psychotic element.
“Investigations during police custody must in particular determine the motive of the person concerned, confirm the absence of psychiatric pathology and determine the conditions of manufacture and detention of the homemade weapon used,” specified Laurent Gumbau in the press release.
Arles prison, created in 1991, is reserved for prisoners sentenced to sentences of more than 10 years of criminal imprisonment or presenting security risks. It was in this establishment that Corsican independence activist Yvan Colonna was detained, sentenced to life imprisonment for the assassination of prefect Erignac in 1998 in Ajaccio, and where he was fatally attacked by a radicalized fellow prisoner in 2022. .
