VIDEO – Network, crimes, security…: what Mohamed Amra’s wiretapping reveals

Before his escape, Mohamed Amra ran his network from his prison cell, using cell phones.

The wiretaps carried out during his time behind bars reveal an ultraviolent man, involved in high crime.

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Bloody attack on a prison van: the hunt for Mohamed Amra

It was from La Santé prison in Paris that Mohamed Amra directed his criminal activities in an almost professional manner for months. All with a simple phone. According to our information, “La Mouche” has a solid network which has enabled it, at any time, to obtain devices equipped with cellular data (and therefore not just obsolete mobiles simply allowing for incoming/outgoing calls) . He was thus able to remotely manage certain “core drilling”, drug trafficking or ambushes of rivals, as revealed The Parisian. In June 2022, for example, he was suspected of having ordered the assassination of a former associate. At the same time, he could count on support who assured him almost immediate and unlimited delivery of narcotics or food.

In total, nine phones were found in his cell, delivered by accomplices to the visiting room, or put back in packages thrown over the prison walls. However, these telephone conversations also represented a real gold mine for the police, who had placed a listening device in the detainee’s cell. “For us, it’s a fantastic tool. We need this means of communication to carry out intelligence. A lot of objectives in our procedures use telephones”confided a judicial police investigator to TF1/LCI. “On the hunt forAmrathe conversations he was able to have with the outside world are useful to us today.”he adds.

Insufficient security?

The fact remains that dysfunctions have been noted at several levels, their accumulation allowing the prisoner to escape. In addition to a form of discrepancy between the investigators responsible for the transcriptions of the spied on conversations and the prison staff, the dangerousness of Mohamed Amra was obviously largely underestimated. “The security that was put in place during the hearing on May 7 (a week before his escape, editor’s note) was traditional and compliant security for a correctional defendant. It was perhaps not adapted to an individual as criminogenic as it is now revealed”points out Me Grégory Kabak, lawyer at the Paris bar, at the microphone of TF1.

A device which contrasts with the report of one of the investigators in charge of the case, according to whom the man on the run is “driven by violence, the lure of gain, easy money and fascinated by weapons”. “He is foreign to all feelings”he specifies.