An inmate known for “significant psychiatric disorders” and equipped with a homemade pick held five people hostage on Friday at Arles prison (Bouches-du-Rhône), four nursing staff and a guard, according to police and prison sources .
Aged 37, the man is incarcerated for rape at gunpoint and has expressed his desire to be changed penitentiary center, said a source close to the case, specifying that the taking of hostages, in The prison’s health unit had been in progress since 11:10 a.m. “The situation remains calm”according to this source, a calm confirmed by an AFP journalist on site, only the comings and goings of police vehicles entering and leaving the prison seeming to punctuate the life of the establishment.
Intervention and security teams are on site
The man presents “a psychological profile, not a terrorist profile or anything else“, the prison administration told AFP, emphasizing that the regional intervention and security teams (Eris) are on site, as well as the local prison security teams (ELSP). The inmate was eligible for release in 2031 , specified the source close to the matter.
The Bouches-du-Rhône police headquarters confirmed that an event was “in progress at the Arles central house“, confirming the initial information from the daily La Provence. The Raid intervention forces were activated by the police prefect, “who is monitoring the situation closely“, added the prefecture.
Yvan Colonna’s ex-prison
“We have mobilized all means“to put an end to the hostage-taking, indicated on been to meet the staff of the Marseille Baumettes prison. Mr. Darmanin indicated that he was following “.in real time the evolution of the situation“.
The Arles central prison, a 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, and it was there that he was fatally attacked by a fellow inmate in 2022.
Yvan Colonna was serving a life sentence there for the assassination of prefect Claude Erignac in 1998 in Ajaccio. He had been violently attacked in the sports hall by Franck Elong Abé, a radicalized 36-year-old man convicted in particular in a terrorist case.
This prison, closed for six years, between 2003 and 2009, after being flooded during a flood of the Rhône, had also welcomed an inmate like Jean-Marc Rouillan, member of the far-left armed group Direct Action, of which he had was one of the co-founders.
Arles prison hostage taking
