The anguish lasted a few hours in Arles prison. Since midday, an inmate had been holding four health personnel and a prison officer hostage in the infirmary of the central house.
At the end of the afternoon, the outcome came: the detainee, aged 37, surrendered and was arrested. The hostages are safe and sound. “The hostage taker surrendered. No injuries”indicated the Bouches-du-Rhône police headquarters, specifying that the police prefect, the public prosecutor and the mayor of Arles were going to make a press briefing on site.
The man, who was serving a prison sentence for rape at gunpoint, was serving his sentence in Arles prison. He explained his action by his wish to be transferred to another prison.
During the afternoon, the inmate had released a woman, a doctor.
The man presents “a psychological profile, not a terrorist profile or anything else”the prison administration told AFP. The inmate was eligible for release in 2031said a source close to the matter.
A central house reserved for long sentences
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 a detainee like Jean-Marc Rouillan, member of the far-left armed group Direct Action, of which he had been one of the co-founders.
