The inmate was eligible for release in 2031, said the source close to the case.
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 was monitoring the situation closely,” added the prefecture.
Hostage taking in the Netherlands: the latest information on the suspect
Yvan Colonna's ex-prison
“We have mobilized all means” to put an end to the hostage-taking, indicated on The occasion on which he notably went to meet the staff of the Marseille Baumettes prison.
Mr. Darmanin indicated that he was following the evolution of the situation “in real time”.
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.
